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DOROTHY WORDSWORTH 



The Story of a Sisters Love 



BY 

EDMUND LEE 



NEW YORK 
DODD, MEAD, AND COMPANY 

1887 






By arrangement with the English publishers. 



ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED 

BY RAND AVERY COMPANY, 

BOSTON, MASS. 



1 -DEC 3 



i I 



Cor* 



•»pt;p 






TO 

MISS QUILLINAN, 

A STRONG LINK 

BETWEEN THE PAST AND PRESENT GENERATIONS 

OF THE FAMILY OF WHICH 

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH 

WAS SUCH A DISTINGUISHED ORNAMENT, 

THIS LITTLE WORK IS 
(BY PERMISSION) 

GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED. 



PREFACE. 



THIS little book owes its origin to the fact that, 
with the exception of Professor Shairp's Sketch 
contained in the preface to the " Tour in Scotland," 
no biography or memoir of the subject of it has 
hitherto been written. Seeing what an important part 
Miss Wordsworth occupied in influencing the revival 
of English poetry at the close of the last century, this 
has frequently been to me a matter of surprise. To 
the best of my knowledge, she does not even occupy 
any place in the numerous sketches of famous women 
which have from time to time appeared. At the same 
time the references to her in the biographies of her 
brother and in the reviews of his works are many. 

My main object in the present work has been, so 
far as permissible, to gather together into the form of 
a Memoir of her life various allusions to Miss Words- 
worth, together with such further particulars as might 
be procurable, and with some reflections to which such 
a life gives rise. My task has, therefore, been one of 

a compiler rather than an author. 

5 



6 PREFACE. 

I acknowledge my great indebtedness to all sources 
from whence information has been obtained. In ad- 
dition to the authorities after mentioned, I desire 
especially to mention the kindness of Dr. Sadler for 
his permission to reprint the letters of Miss Words- 
worth to the late Mr. Henry Crabb Robinson, pub- 
lished in his " Diary and Reminiscences " ; and of 
Mr. F. W. H. Myers for the like permission to make 
use of some letters which for the first time appeared 
in his " Wordsworth." 

However far I have failed in my original design, 
and however imperfectly I may have performed my 
self-appointed task of love, it cannot be doubted that 
no name can more fittingly have a place in female 
biography than that of Dorothy Wordsworth. 

Bradford, 1886. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Introductory 15 

CHAPTER II. 

Childhood and Early Life — Early Influence — 
Wordsworth in France — Settlement at Race- 
down 19 

CHAPTER III. 

Raisley Calvert — Residence at Racedown — 
Coleridge — Removal to Alfoxden ... 31 

CHAPTER TV. 

Alfoxden — Hazlitt — Charles and Mary Lamb — 
Cottle — Residence in Germany . .. . 43 

CHAPTER V. 
The Lake District 58 

CHAPTER VI. 

Life at Grasmere .73 

7 



8 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER VII. 

Some Memorial Nooks — Lancrigg Wood — Emma's 
Dell— William's Peak — Point Rash Judgment 
— Rock of Names 85 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Circle Widened — Mrs. Wordsworth . . 94 

CHAPTER IX. 
Tour in Scotland — Miss Wordsworth's Journal, 107 

CHAPTER X. 

Life at Grasmere — Cafi\ Wordsworth. . .126 

CHAPTER XI. 

De Quincey — His Description of Miss Words- 
worth — Removal to Allan Bank . . . 134 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Children of Blentarn Ghyll — Deaths of 
Wordsworth's Children 145 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Removal to Rydal Mount — Dora Wordsworth . 153 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Friends — Tour on Continent 160 

CHAPTER XV. 
Further Influence . 169 



CONTENTS. 9 

CHAPTER XVI. 

PAGE 

Illness and Last Years 183 

CHAPTER XVII. 
A Quiet Resting-place 199 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Miss Wordsworth's Poems 207 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Journal of Tour at Ullswater . . . .215 



LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 



The Poetical Works of Wordsworth. 

Memoirs of Wordsworth, by the late Bishop of Lincoln. 

Wordsworth's Prose Works. 

Miss Wordsworth's Tour in Scotland. Edited by Prin- 
cipal S hair p. 

Wordsworth's Description of the Lakes. 

Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, 1839 and 1840. 

Recollections of the Lakes, by De Quincey. 

Life of De Quincey, by H. A. Page. 

Memoirs of Hazlitt, by W. Carew Hazlitt. 

Diary and Reminiscences of Henry Crabb Robinson. 

Wordsworth, by F. W. H. Myers (English Men of Let- 
ters). 

Autobiography of Sir Henry Taylor. 

Memoir of Sara Coleridge. 

Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher. 

Cottle's Early Recollections of Coleridge. 

Howitt's Homes and Haunts of the British Poets. 

Letters of Charles Lamb, by T. N. Talfourd. 

The Lake Country, by Mrs. E. Lynn Linton. 

The English Lake District as Interpreted in the 
Works of Wordsworth, by Professor Knight. 

Blackwood's Magazine. 

The Transactions of the Wordsworth Society. 



" I knew a maid, 



Birds in the bower, and lambs in the green fields 

Could they have known her, would have loved ; methought 

Her very presence such a sweetness breathed, 

That flowers, and trees, and even the silent hills, 

And every thing she looked on, should have had 

An intimation how she bore herself 

Towards them, and to all creatures. God delights 

In such a being ; for, her common thoughts 

Are piety, her life is gratitude." 

The Prelude. 



DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

THE influences which help to shape human destiny 
are many and varied. At some period in the 
early history of two lives, beginning their course 
separately, one of them, by coming into contact with 
the other, is quickened into deeper vitality, and the 
germ of a great and unthought-of future is formed. 
Lives touch each other, and thenceforth, like meeting 
waters, their onward course is destined, and flows 
through deeper and broader channels. 

Among the most commanding of human influences 
is that of woman. As mother, or sister, or wife we find 
her, at every period of a man's existence, occupying a 
prominent part as his guide, comforter, and friend. 
Not unfrequently it happens that the influence of a 
sister is the greatest, and that to which a career is due. 
Especially is this so when the mother dies whilst the 
brother and sister are young. The influence of the 
wife, all-powerful though it may be, is of a later date, 

15 



1 6 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

when character and conduct have to a great extent 
become formed, and the tendency of genius settled. 
When the sister's companionship gives place to that of 
the wife, a career may have become developed. In 
this way the most dominant power may remain un- 
revealed ; and the blossoming and perfection of char- 
acter may never be traced to their original source. 

Many pleasant stories of affection between brothers 
and sisters, and of their inspiration of each other, have 
been told ; and many more have existed among those 
who have lived unhistoric lives, and whose annals are 
recorded only among memories which linger round 
lonely hearths. Lovely and pleasant in their saddened 
lives were Charles and Mary Lamb. The way in which 
they were each devoted to the other, and in which they 
were bound up in each other's well-being to the com- 
plete forgetfulness of self, suggests a pleasing and 
pathetic picture of fraternal fidelity, while it reveals 
a domestic history the most touching and tragic the 
world has known. 

We have a companion picture, but a more happy 
and pleasant one, in the lives of William and Dorothy 
Wordsworth. 

The culture and well-being of a nation depend 
largely upon the character, purity, and progress of its 
literature. To no class of writers has the world been 
more indebted than to its poets — those " rare souls, 
whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world." It 
was well said by one of these : " Poetry has been to 
me its own exceeding great reward. It has soothed 
my afflictions ; it has multiplied and refined my enjoy- 



INTR OD UC TOR Y. 1 7 

ments ; it has endeared solitude ; and it has given me 
the habit of wishing to discover the good and the 
beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me." 

Among those who have permanently elevated and 
enriched our English literature during the present cen- 
tury, none is entitled to a more honored place than is 
William Wordsworth, our greatest laureate ; and none 
of the influences which entered into his life, and served 
to build up his great career, and to complete his great 
work, can fail to be of interest. And of all the world's 
benefactors — of all who in any of the primary depart- 
ments, have achieved most signal distinction, has none 
been more indebted to the aid of another, than was 
Wordsworth to the devoted aid and the constraining 
and softening power of his sister. 

In many respects there is a marked similarity 
between the lives of Charles and Mary Lamb and 
those of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. The bur- 
den of the story of each is that of a brother's and sis- 
ter's love. But there is also a great difference. While 
one is the tale of an elder sister's affection, and of the 
brother's self-sacrifice for the tender care of her during 
periods of nature's saddest affliction, the other tells 
how a younger sister consecrated her life to her 
brother's greatest good, relinquishing for herself 
every thing outside him in such a way that she became 
absorbed in his own existence. But as a self-sacri- 
ficing love always brings its own reward, the poet's sis- 
ter attained hers. She is for all time identified and 
associated with her brother, who, with a grateful love, 
has " crowned her for immortality." As Mr. Paxton 



1 8 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

Hood remarks : " Not Laura with Petrarch, nor Bea- 
trice with Dante, nor the fair Geraldine with Surrey, 
are more really connected than is Wordsworth with 
his sister Dorothy." 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY LIFE. 1 9 



CHAPTER II. 

CHILDHOOD AND EARLY LIFE. 

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH was the only 
daughter and third child of John and Anne 
Wordsworth. She was born on Christmas Day, 1771, 
at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, being a year and 
nine months younger than her famous brother, the 
poet. John Wordsworth, the father, was an attorney- 
at-law, who had attained considerable success in his 
profession, being the solicitor of the then Earl of Lons- 
dale, in an old manor-house belonging to whose family 
he resided. Miss Wordsworth's mother was, on the 
maternal side, descended from an old and distin- 
guished family, being the only daughter of William 
Cookson, of Penrith, who had married Dorothy Crack- 
enthorp, whose family, we are informed, had, since the 
early part of the fourteenth century, resided at New- 
biggen Hall, Westmoreland. The Wordsworths them- 
selves traced their descent from a Yorkshire family of 
that name who had settled in the country about the 
time of the Norman Conquest. 

Dorothy had the misfortune to lose her excellent 
mother when she was a little more than six years old. 
After this great loss her father's health declined, and 



20 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

she was left an orphan at the early age of twelve. The 
sources of information concerning her childhood are 
very meagre. 

We cannot doubt that for the qualities of mind and 
heart which distinguished her she was, in common 
with the other members of her family — her four 
brothers, who all won for themselves successful careers 
— indebted to her parenthood, and especially to her 
mother, of whom the poet says : — 

" She was the heart 
And hinge of all our learning and our loves." 

The beauty and gentleness of disposition by which, 
in after years, Dorothy Wordsworth developed into 
such a perfect woman were not absent in her early 
childhood. Although we know so little, we have 
abundant testimony that as a child she was fittingly 
named Dorothea — the gift of God — and that then 
her life of ministry to her poet-brother began. We 
can well imagine how the little dark-eyed brunette, 
sparkling and impulsive damsel as she was, and the 
only girl in the family, became the darling of the cir- 
cle. In after years, when her favorite and famous 
brother had entered on the career which she helped 
so much to stimulate and to perfect, we find in his 
poems many allusions to her, as well in her prattling 
childhood as in her mature years. The sight of a 
butterfly calls to the poet's mind the pleasures of the 
early home, the time when he and his little playmate 
" together chased the butterfly." The kindness of 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY LIFE. 21 

her child heart is told in a few expressive words. 
He says : — 

" A very hunter did I rush 

Upon the prey ; — with leaps and springs 
I followed on from brake to bush ; 
But she — God love her ! — feared to brush 
The dust from off its wings." 

The sight of a sparrow's nest, many years after, also 
served to bring to the poet's remembrance his father's 
home and his sister's love. The " bright blue eggs " 
appeared to him " a vision of delight." In them he 
saw another sparrow's nest, in the years gone by daily 
visited in company with his little sister. 

"Behold, within that leafy shade, 
Those bright blue eggs together laid ! 
On me the chance-discovered sight 
Gleamed like a vision of delight. 
I started, seeming to espy 

The home and sheltered bed, 
The Sparrow's dwelling, which, hard by 
My Father's house, in wet or dry, 
My sister Emmeline and I 

Together visited. 
She looked at it and seemed to fear it, 
Dreading, though wishing, to be near it : 
Such heart was in her, being then 
A little Prattler among men. 
The Blessing of my later years 

Was with me when a boy : 
She gave me eyes, she gave me ears ; 
And humble cares, and delicate fears ; 
A heart, the fountain of sweet tears, 

And love, and thought, and joy." 



22 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

It is to her early thoughtfulness that the poet alludes 
in another poem having reference to the same period. 
In this poem he represents his sister and her young 
play-fellows gathering spring flowers, and thus records 
her prudent " Foresight " : — 

" Here are daisies, take your fill ; 

Pansies, and the cuckoo-flower : 
Of the lofty daffodil 

Make your bed or make your bower ; 
Fill your lap and fill your bosom ; 
Only spare the strawberry-blossom 1 



God has given a kindlier power 
To the favored strawberry-flower. 
Hither soon as spring is fled 

You and Charles and I will walk; 
Lurking berries, ripe and red, 

Then will hang on every stalk, 
Each within the leafy bower; 
And for that promise spare the flower 1 " 

An incident showing the tender sensibility of her 
nature when a child is also deserving of special men- 
tion. In a note to the " Second Evening Voluntary," 
Wordsworth says : " My sister, when she first heard 
the voice of the sea from this point (the high ground 
on the coast of Cumberland overlooking Whitehaven 
and the sea beyond it) and beheld the sea spread 
before her, burst into tears. Our family then lived at 
Cockermouth, and this fact was often mentioned 
among us as indicating the sensibility for which she 
was so remarkable." 

The death of their mother was, however, the signal 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY LIFE. 2$ 

for separation. Her brother William was sent to 
school at Hawkshead, in North Lancashire, and Doro- 
thy went to reside with her maternal grandfather at 
Penrith. Subsequently, during her brother's school 
and college days, we are informed that she lived 
chiefly at Halifax with her cousin, occasionally mak- 
ing lengthened visits at Forncett, to her cousin, Dr. 
Cookson, Canon of Windsor. Although they were in 
this way for some years deprived of each other's so- 
ciety, except during occasional college vacations, they 
were not forgotten by each other, and their early love 
did not grow cold. Wordsworth, having gone to 
Cambridge in 1787, during one of his early vacations 
visited his relations at Penrith, when he was for a short 
period restored to his sister's society. In his autobio- 
graphical poem, "The Prelude," he has thus recorded 
the fact : — 

" In summer, making quest for works of art, 
Or scenes renowned for beauty, I explored 
That streamlet whose blue current works its way 
Between romantic Dovedale's spiry rocks; 
Pried into Yorkshire dales, or hidden tracts 
Of my own native region, and was blest 
Between these sundry wanderings with a joy 
Above all joys, that seemed another morn 
Risen on mid noon ; blest with the presence 

Of that sole Sister 

Now, after separation desolate, 

Restored to me — such absence that she seemed 

A gift then first bestowed." 

It cannot be doubted that the poetic tendency of 
Dorothy Wordsworth's mind, like that of her brother, 



24 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

was fostered by the beauties of the natural scenery in 
the midst of which a large portion of her childhood 
was cast. The beauty of wood, and lake, and moun- 
tain early sank into their receptive minds, and helped 
to make them what they became, both to each other, 
and to the world. To the influence of Nature in the 
maturing of their intellect, the development of both 
mind and heart, it may be necessary to refer later. 

During the last of his college vacations — that of 
the year 1790, so remarkable in French history — 
Wordsworth made a three months' tour on the Con- 
tinent with his friend, Mr. Robert Jones. Writing to 
his sister, then budding into womanhood, from the 
Lake of Constance, a fine description of the scenery 
through which they were passing, he says : " I have 
thought of you perpetually ; and never have my eyes 
rested upon a scene of great loveliness but I have almost 
instantly wished that you could for a moment be trans- 
ported to the place where I stood to enjoy it. I have 
been more particularly induced to form those wishes, 
because the scenes of Switzerland have no resemblance 
to any I have found in England ; consequently it may 
probably never be in your power to form an idea of 
them." And he concludes by saying : " I must now 
bid you adieu, with assuring you that you are perpet- 
ually in my thoughts." 

Wordsworth took his degree, and left Cambridge 
in 1 79 1. Being undecided as to his future occupa- 
tion, he spent the succeeding twelve months in France. 
His life for some time was wandering and uncertain. 
He has himself stated that he was once told by an 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY LIFE. 2$ 

intimate friend of his mother's that she had said the 
only one of her five children about whose future life 
she was anxious was William ; and he, she said, would 
be remarkable either for good or for evil. 

Wordsworth's experience of the French Revolution 
was far from being happy. His expectations were 
ruthlessly disappointed. With his ardent spirit he 
could not be an unconcerned observer of the stirring 
events which then agitated that ill-fated country. He 
had bright hopes of great results from the Revolution 
— of signal benefits to mankind. How bitterly he 
was disappointed we learn something from " The Prel- 
ude." The awful scenes of the time of blood and 
terror which followed were so deeply imaged on his 
mind, that for years afterwards they haunted his dreams, 
and he seemed 

" To hear a voice that cried, 
To the whole city, sleep no more." 

Fortunately for him he was obliged to return home, 
led, as he afterwards acknowledged, " by the gracious 
Providence of heaven." 

It was now quite time that Wordsworth should 
determine upon his future career ; and this important 
subject seems to have occasioned some anxiety amongst 
his friends. His father, having been taken away in the 
prime of life, had not been able to make much pro- 
vision for his children, especially as a considerable sum 
which had been due to him from the Earl of Lonsdale 
remained unpaid. It had been intended that, after 
leaving the University, Wordsworth should enter the 



26 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

Church. To this, however, he had conscientious ob- 
jections. On other grounds the profession of the law 
was equally distasteful to him. His three brothers 
had chosen their pursuits, in which they all lived to 
distinguish themselves ; but the one who was destined 
to be the greatest of them all, we find, at the age of 
twenty- three, still undetermined as to his future course 
of life. He had, indeed, at an early age, begun to 
write some of his earlier poems, to which, it is worthy 
of remark, he was incited and encouraged by his sister. 
Among other pieces, his " Evening Walk," addressed 
to his sister, had been composed when, at school and 
during his college vacations, he had been " far from 
that dearest friend." 

However much Wordsworth's relatives and friends 
generally may have been disappointed in his want of 
decision, Dorothy's confidence in him and her love 
to him never wavered. In a letter, written to a dear 
friend, dated February, 1792, she says, speaking of 
her brothers Christopher and William : " Christopher 
is steady and sincere in his attachments. William has 
both these virtues in an eminent degree, and a sort 
of violence of affection — if I may so term it — which 
demonstrates itself every moment of the day, when 
the objects of his affection are present with him, in 
a thousand almost imperceptible attentions to their 
wishes, in a sort of restless watchfulness which I know 
not how to describe, a tenderness that never sleeps, 
and, at the same time, such a delicacy of manner as 
I have observed in few men." Again, writing in June, 
1792, to the same friend, she says: "I have strolled 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY LIFE. 2*J 

into a neighboring meadow, where I am enjoying the 
melody of birds and the busy sounds of a fine sum- 
mer's evening. But, oh ! how imperfect is my pleasure 
whilst I am alone ! Why are you not seated with me ? 
and my dear William, why is he not here also? I 
could almost fancy that I see you both near me. I 
hear you point out a spot, where, if we could erect a 
little cottage and call it our own, we should be the 
happiest of human beings. I see my brother fired 
with the idea of leading his sister to such a retreat. 
Our parlor is in a moment furnished ; our garden is 
adorned by magic ; the roses and honeysuckles spring 
at our command ; the wood behind the house lifts its 
head, and furnishes us with a winter's shelter and a 
summer's noonday shade. My dear friend, I trust that 
ere long you will be, without the aid of imagination, 
the companion of my walks, and my dear William may 
be of our party. . . . He is now going upon a tour 
in the West of England with a gentleman who was 
formerly a schoolfellow — a man of fortune, who is to 
bear all the expenses of the journey, and only requests 
the favor of William's company. He is perfectly at 
liberty to quit this companion as soon as any thing 
more advantageous offers. But it is enough to say that 
I am likely to have the happiness of introducing you 
to my beloved brother. You must forgive me for talk- 
ing so much of him. My affection hurries me on, and 
makes me forget that you cannot be so much inter- 
ested in the subject as I am. You do not know him ; 
you do not know how amiable he is. Perhaps you 
may reply : ' But I know how blinded you are.' Well, 



28 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

my dearest, I plead guilty at once ; I must be blind ; 
he cannot be so pleasing as my fondness makes him. 
I am willing to allow that half the virtues with which 
I fancy him endowed are the creation of my love ; but 
surely I may be excused ! He was never afraid of 
comforting his sister ; he never left her in anger ; he 
always met her with joy ; he preferred her society to 
every other pleasure — or, rather, when we were so 
happy as to be within each other's reach, he had no 
pleasure when we were compelled to be divided. Do 
not, then, expect too much from this brother, of whom 
I have delighted so to talk to you. In the first place, 
you must be with him more than once before he will 
be perfectly easy in conversation. In the second place, 
his person is not in his favor — at least, I should think 
not — but I soon ceased to discover this ; nay, I almost 
thought that the opinion I had formed was erroneous. 
He is, however, certainly rather plain, though other- 
wise has an extremely thoughtful countenance ; but 
when he speaks, it is often lighted up by a smile which 
I think very pleasing. But enough, he is my brother ; 
why should I describe him? I shall be launching 
again into panegyric." Again she says : " William 
writes to me regularly, and is a most affectionate 
brother." 

It is gratifying to know that this warm attachment 
of Miss Wordsworth to her brother was at all times 
returned. In the year 1793, when they were discuss- 
ing the means of realizing their cherished idea of re- 
tiring to their little cottage, Wordsworth writes : " I 
will write to my uncle, and tell him I cannot think 



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY LIFE. 29 

of going anywhere before I have been with you. 
Whatever answer he gives me, I certainly will make 
a point of once more mingling my transports with 
yours. Alas ! my dear sister, how soon must this 
happiness expire ; yet there are moments worth ages." 
Again he says : " Oh, my dear, dear sister, with what 
transport shall I again meet you ! with what rapture 
shall I again wear out the day in your sight ! . . . I 
see you in a moment running, or rather flying, to my 
arms." 

In the early part of 1 794, having still no fixed resi- 
dence, we find Wordsworth staying at Halifax. Writ- 
ing in February of that year to a friend, he says, " My 
sister is under the same roof with me ; indeed, it was 
to see her that I came into the country. I have been 
doing nothing, and still continue to do nothing. What 
is to become of me I know not." About this time 
the brother and sister together made a tour in the 
Lake District. She writes : " After having enjoyed the 
company of my brother William at Halifax, we set 
forward by coach towards Whitehaven, and thence 
to Kendal. I walked, with my brother at my side, 
from Kendal to Grasmere, eighteen miles, and after- 
wards from Grasmere to Keswick, fifteen miles, through 
the most delightful country that was ever seen. We 
are now at a farmhouse about half a mile from Kes- 
wick. When I came I intended to stay only a few 
days ; but the country is so delightful, and, above all, 
I have so full an enjoyment of my brother's company, 
that I have determined to stay a few weeks longer." 

In his uncertainty of mind Wordsworth projected the 



30 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

publishing of a periodical, and afterwards contributing 
to the London Newspaper Press. That the latter 
scheme was not put into practice was owing to the 
fact that just at this time an incident occurred which 
had no small influence upon what may be considered 
the turning point in his life. 



RACED OWN AND ALFOXDEN. 3 1 



CHAPTER III. 

RACEDOWN AND ALFOXDEN. 

TO all lovers of Wordsworth it is well known how, 
while he was yet undecided as to his future call- 
ing, he went to nurse a young friend named Raisley 
Calvert, who was afflicted with a malady which threat- 
ened to prove fatal, and by whose side he felt it his 
duty to remain. After a protracted illness his friend 
died, and bequeathed him a legacy of ^900. It is 
probable that in this generous act, to which Words- 
worth has more than once recorded his indebtedness, 
Mr. Calvert was actuated by mixed motives ; that it 
was to be regarded not only as an expression of grati- 
tude, but that he also perceived in his friend talents 
which others were slow to recognize, and desired thus 
to provide him with the means of devoting himself, at 
any rate for a time, to the pursuit of poetry. However 
this may be, the incident cannot but be regarded as a 
link in the chain of providential circumstances which 
combined to prepare the poet for his future high call- 
ing. It is not, however, intended in this sketch to 
refer to Wordsworth himself more than is necessary for 
the purpose of elucidating any events in the life and 
character of his sister, or of tracing her influence upon 



32 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

him. Having thus obtained the means of livelihood 
for a few years, one of their cherished hopes was real- 
ized. His childhood's playmate became his constant 
and lifelong companion, devoting herself to him and 
his interests and aims as only a noble woman could 
have done. 

At what a critical time Miss Wordsworth thus en- 
tered more closely into the life of her brother we learn 
from his biography, as well as from his works. De- 
jected and despondent by reason of the scenes of 
which he had been an eyewitness in France, and the 
terrible days which followed, Wordsworth was at this 
time greatly in danger of becoming misanthropic, and 
of giving way to a melancholy which might have col- 
ored all his life, and deprived his works of the health- 
ful and educating influence which they breathe. All 
disappointment and sorrow may become the precursor 
of blessing, the mother of a great hope. It is the 
bruised herb that exudes its fragrance ; the broken 
heart that, when bound, pulsates most truly. It was 
a saying of Goethe that he never had an affliction 
which did not turn into a poem. But disappointment 
may also be the parent of gloom, and pave the way 
to a spirit of morose indifference. At such junctures 
a life may, by the skilful leading of a wise affection, 
be saved for beauty and happiness, for greater good 
and more exalted attainment and enjoyment, by rea- 
son of the very sorrow which, unhallowed, would have 
plunged it into bitterness. 

However much Wordsworth's goodness of heart and 
ardent love of Nature helped to protect him, it was at 



RACE DOWN AND ALFOXDEN 33 

this critical period that he was chiefly indebted to the 
soothing and cheering power of his sister for uplifting 
him from the gloom which had gathered around him, 
and for restoring and maintaining that equable frame 
of mind which from thenceforth unvaryingly character- 
ized him. Her clear insight and womanly instinct at 
this time saw deeper into the sources of real satisfac- 
tion ; and her helpful and healing sympathy came to 
his aid. By her tact she led him from the distracting 
cares of political agitation to those more elevating and 
satisfying influences which an ardent and contemplative 
love of Nature and poetry cultivate, and which sweet 
and kindred human affections strengthen and develop. 
It remained for Miss Wordsworth, if not to awaken, to 
draw out and stimulate her brother's better nature, to 
deaden what was unworthy, and to encourage, by ten- 
der care and patient endeavor, that higher life towards 
which his mind and soul were turned. She became, 
and for many years continued to be, the loadstar of 
his existence, and affords one of the most pleasing in- 
stances of sisterly devotion and fidelity on record. In 
her brother was verified the poet's prophecy : — 

" True heart and shining star shall guide thee right." 

Well was it for Wordsworth, and for us, that he had 
a sister, and that it was to this brother — one after 
her own heart — she at this juncture devoted herself. 
In this we may see another of the providential cir- 
cumstances that beset the career of Wordsworth. As 
Spenser says : — 



34 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

" It chanced — 
Eternal God that chance did guide." 

Writing of Miss Wordsworth at this time, her 
nephew, the late Bishop of Lincoln, says : " She was 
endowed with tender sensibility, with an exquisite per- 
ception of beauty, with a retentive recollection of 
what she saw, with a felicitous tact in discerning and 
admirable skill in delineating natural objects with 
graphic accuracy and vivid gracefulness. She weaned 
him from contemporary politics, and won him to 
beauty and truth." 

A writer in The Quarterly Review, many years 
ago (I believe the late Mr. J. G. Lockhart), referring 
to this period, writes : " Depressed and bewildered, 
he turned to abstract science, and was beginning to 
torment his mind with fresh problems, when, after 
his long voyage through unknown seas in search of 
Utopia, with sails full set and without compass or 
rudder, his sister came to his aid, and conducted him 
back to the quiet harbor from which he started. His 
visits to her had latterly been short and far between, 
until his brightening fortunes enabled them to indulge 
the wish of their hearts to live together, and then she 
convinced him that he was born to be a poet, and had 
no call to lose himself in the endless labyrinth of 
theoretical puzzles. The calm of a home would alone 
have done much towards sobering his mind. While 
he roamed restlessly about the world he was drawn 
in by every eddy, and obeyed the influence of every 
wind ; but when once he had escaped from the tur- 



RACEDOWN AND ALFOXDEN. 35 

moil, into the pure and peaceful pleasures of domestic 
existence, he felt the vanity and vexation of his pre- 
vious course." 

Wordsworth himself, afterwards writing of this same 
period of his life, says : — 

"Depressed, bewildered thus, I did not walk 
With scoffers, seeking light and gay revenge 
From indiscriminate laughter, nor sit down 
In reconcilement with an utter waste 
Of intellect. 



Then it was — 
Thanks to the bounteous Giver of all good ! — 
That the beloved sister in whose sight 
Those days were passed, now speaking in a voice 
Of sudden admonition — like a brook 
That did but cross a lonely road, now 
Is seen, heard, felt, and caught at every turn, 
Companion never lost through many a league — 
Maintain'd for me a saving intercourse 
With my true self; for, though bedimmed and changed 
Much, as it seemed, I was no further changed 
Than as a clouded, and a waning moon ; 
She whispered still that brightness would return. 
She in the midst of all preserved me still 
A poet ; made me seek beneath that name, 
And that alone, my office upon earth." 

We thus find Miss Wordsworth keeping house with 
her brother, who, having at length determined upon 
his course of life, was, in 1795, living at Racedown 
Lodge in Dorsetshire. From this time forth, amid all 
the changes of fortune and condition, they were close 
and life-long companions. 



2,6 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

However great may have been her influence upon 
him previously, it now became a moulding and edu- 
cating power. They were both in the strength of 
their youth — that time of radiant enjoyment — bound 
not only by that most endearing of natural ties, but 
by tastes, aims, and hopes most singularly mutual. 
The close association of daily intercourse and com- 
munity of thought, together with a thorough sympa- 
thy, seemed now, as only an ardent enthusiasm and 
devoted love of kindred objects can do, to cement 
their lives. In this their first home, the only one which 
they had really known since childhood, and to which 
they had so longingly looked forward, they were all 
in all to each other. Separation from the busy world, 
and from society, was no hardship to them, so long as 
they were uninterrupted in the society of each other, 
and in the pursuits they loved. Though in a part of 
the country, then so remote that they had only a post 
once a week, they went into raptures over their lot. 
The house which they temporarily occupied was, we 
are informed, pretty well stocked with books, and they 
were industrious in both indoor and outdoor occupa- 
tions. They read, and thought, and talked together, 
rambling through the lovely combs and by the ever- 
changing sea. "My brother," she says, "handles the 
spade with great dexterity," while she herself was 
engaged in reading Italian authors. 

A writer in Blackwood, a few years ago, referring to 
Miss Wordsworth at this time, says : " She had been 
separated from her brother since their childhood, and 
now at the first moment when their re-union was pos- 



RACE DOWN AND ALFOXDEN 37 

sible, seems to have rushed to him with all the im- 
petuosity of her nature. Without taking his sister 
into consideration, no just estimate can be formed of 
Wordsworth. He was, as it were, henceforward, the 
spokesman to the world of two souls. It was not that 
she visibly or consciously aided and stimulated him, 
but that she was him — a second pair of eyes to 
see, a second and more delicate intuition to discern, 
a second heart to enter into all that came before 
their mutual observation. This union was so close, 
that in many instances it becomes difficult to discern 
which is the brother and which the sister. She was 
part not only of his life, but of his imagination. He 
saw by her, felt through her, at her touch the strings 
of the instrument began to thrill, the great melodies 
awoke. Her journals are Wordsworth in prose, just 
as his poems are Dorothy in verse. The one soul 
kindled at the other. The brother and sister met 
with all the enthusiasm of youthful affection, strength- 
ened and concentrated by long separation, and the 
delightful sense that here at last was the possibility of 
making for themselves a home." After referring to 
their pecuniary means, the writer adds : " And with 
this, in their innocent frugality and courage, they 
faced the world like a new pair of babes in the wood. 
Their aspirations in one way were infinite, but in 
another modest as any cottager's. Daily bread suf- 
ficed them, and the pleasure to be derived from 
Nature, who is cheap, and gives herself lavishly with- 
out thought or hope of reward." 

Although at this remote place friends and visitors 



38 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

were few, it was here the Wordsworths first made the 
acquaintance of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who, in con- 
junction with Southey, had already begun to make a 
name. This acquaintance ripened into a close and 
uninterrupted friendship, only to be ended by death. 
It was here also that Wordsworth composed his tragedy 
The Borderers and "The Ruined Cottage," which 
latter poem afterwards formed the first part of the 
" Excursion." The ardor with which the young poets 
entered into each other's plans, and the enthusiasm of 
the sister, who was in such perfect rapport with them, 
is gathered from her statement that the "first thing 
that was read when he (Coleridge) came was William's 
new poem, ' The Ruined Cottage,' with which he was 
much delighted ; and after tea he repeated to us two 
acts and a half of his tragedy Osorio. The next 
morning William read his tragedy The Borderers" 

The following description of Coleridge, from the 
pen of Miss Wordsworth, cannot fail to be of interest. 
Writing to a friend, she says : " You had a great loss 
in not seeing Coleridge. He is a wonderful man. His 
conversation teems with soul, mind, and spirit. Then 
he is so benevolent, so good-tempered and cheerful, 
and, like William, excites himself so much about every 
little trifle. At first I thought him very plain — that 
is, for about three minutes. He is pale, thin, has a 
wide mouth, thick lips, and not very good teeth ; long- 
ish, loose-growing, half-curling, rough, black hair. But 
if you hear him speak for five minutes, you think no 
more about them. His eye is large and full, and not 
very dark, but gray — such an eye as would receive 



RACEDOWN AND ALFOXDEJST. 39 

from a heavy soul the dullest expression ; but it speaks 
every emotion of his animated mind. It has more of 
the ' poet's eye in fine frenzy rolling ' than I ever wit- 
nessed. He has fine dark eyebrows and an overhang- 
ing forehead." 

By the side of this striking picture of Coleridge 
may be fittingly placed his first impressions of Miss 
Wordsworth. Writing to Mr. Cottle from Nether 
Stowey, in Somersetshire, where he was then residing, 
he says : " Wordsworth and his exquisite sister are 
with me. She is a woman, indeed ! — in mind, I 
mean, and heart ; for her person is such that, if you 
expected to see a pretty woman, you would think her 
ordinary ; if you expected to see an ordinary woman, 
you would think her pretty; but her manners are 
simple, ardent, impressive. In every motion her most 
innocent soul outbeams so brightly that who saw her 
would say : 

* Guilt was a thing impossible in her.* 

Her information various ; her eye watchful in minutest 
observation of Nature ; and her taste a perfect electrom- 
eter. It bends, protrudes, and draws in at subtlest 
beauties and most recondite faults." 

From this description of Coleridge it might appear 
that Miss Wordsworth was one of those happy pos- 
sessors of a face and features which though in repose 
might appear homely, became illumined by the sweet 
smiles of love — flashed into beauty by the gleam of 
the soul-lit eye. 

The pleasure which the friendship of Coleridge 



40 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

afforded them induced Wordsworth and his sister to 
change their residence in order to be near him. 
Accordingly, in the summer of 1797, they settled at 
Alfoxden, near Nether Stowey. Alfoxden is described 
by Hazlitt as a " romantic old family mansion of the 
St. Aubins," and he gives the additional information 
that it was then in the possession of a friend of the 
poet, who gave him the free use of it. De Quincey 
states that he understood that the Wordsworths had 
the use of the house on condition of keeping it in 
repair. 

Although Miss Wordsworth afterwards spoke of 
Racedown as the dearest place of her recollections 
upon the whole surface of the island, as the first home 
she had, she was soon enamoured of her new abode, 
and the scenery of Somersetshire. Of the neighbor- 
hood of Nether Stowey she says, in a letter to a friend, 
dated 4th July : " There is every thing there — sea, 
woods wild as fancy ever painted; brooks clear and 
pebbly as in Cumberland ; villages as romantic ; and 
William and I, in a wander by ourselves, found out a 
sequestered waterfall in a dell formed by steep hills, 
covered by full-grown timber-trees. The woods are 
as fine as those at Lowther, and the country more 
romantic ; it has the character of the less grand parts 
of the neighborhood of the lakes." 

Being settled at Alfoxden, she writes again, on 14th 
August : " Here we are, in a large mansion, in a large 
park, with seventy head of deer around us. But I 
must begin with the day of leaving Racedown to pay 
Coleridge a visit. You know how much we were de- 



RACE DOWN AND ALFOXDEN. 4 1 

lighted with the neighborhood of Stowey. The even- 
ing that I wrote to you, William and I had rambled as 
far as this house, and pryed into the recesses of our 
little brook, but without any more fixed thoughts upon 
it than some dreams of happiness in a little cottage, 
and passing wishes that such a place might be found 
out. We spent a fortnight at Coleridge's : in the 
course of that time we heard that this house was to 
let, applied for it, and took it. Our principal induce- 
ment was Coleridge's society. It was a month yester- 
day since we came to x\lfoxden. 

" The house is a large mansion, with furniture enough 
for a dozen families like ours. There is a very excel- 
lent garden, well stocked with vegetables and fruit. 
The garden is at the end of the house, and our favorite 
parlor, as at Racedown, looks that way. In front is a 
little court, with grass-plot, gravel- walk, and shrubs ; 
the moss roses were in full beauty a month ago. The 
front of the house is to the south ; but is screened 
from the sun by a high hill which rises immediately 
from it. This hill is beautiful, scattered irregularly 
and abundantly with trees, and topped with fern, 
which spreads a considerable way down it. The deer 
dwell here, and sheep, so that we have a living pros- 
pect. From the end of the house we have a view of 
the sea, over a woody, meadow country ; and exactly 
opposite the window, where I now sit, is an immense 
wood, whose round top from this point has exactly the 
appearance of a mighty dome. In some parts of this 
wood there is an under-grove of hollies, which are 
now very beautiful. In a glen at the bottom of the 



42 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

wood is the waterfall of which I spoke, a quarter of a 
mile from the house. We are three miles from Stowey, 
and not two miles from the sea. Wherever we turn 
we have woods, smooth downs, and valleys with small 
brooks running down them, through green meadows, 
hardly ever intersected with hedgerows, but scattered 
over with trees. The hills that cradle these valleys 
are either covered with fern and bilberries, or oak 
woods, which are cut for charcoal. . . . Walks extend 
for miles over the hill-tops ; the great beauty of which 
is their wild simplicity : they are perfectly smooth, 
without rocks. 

" The Tor of Glastonbury is before our eyes during 
more than half of our walk to Stowey ; and in the 
park, wherever we go, keeping about fifteen yards 
above the house, it makes a part of our prospect." 



RESIDENCE A T ALFOXDEN. 43 



CHAPTER IV. 

RESIDENCE AT ALFOXDEN. — REMOVAL TO GRASMERE. 

THE year succeeding the time when Miss Words- 
worth and her brother became resident at Alfox- 
den was one of glowing enjoyment and fruitful industry. 
We are not without a few pleasing pictures of this 
charmed primitive period of their lives — its profitable 
intercourse, its delightful rambles. 

"Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge we roamed, 
Unchecked, or loitered 'mid his sylvan combs; 
Thou, in bewitching words with happy heart, 
Didst chant the vision of that ancient man, 
The bright-eyed mariner; and rueful woes 
Didst utter of the Lady Christabel — 
And I, associate with such labors, steeped 
In soft forgetfulness the livelong hours, 
Murmuring of him who, joyous hap, was found 
After the perils of his moonlight ride, 
Near the loud waterfall ; or her who sate 
In misery near the miserable thorn." 

We can imagine the happy meetings and rapturous 
feelings of the two young poets in the company of the 
bright young woman, who was gifted with a no less 
poetic soul, wandering amid the delightful scenery of 
Somersetshire, revelling in the beauties of woodland 



44 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

and ocean, and the pleasant evenings, when each read 
to the other his growing poems ; and they together dis- 
cussed their ambitious schemes for the golden future, 
receiving the suggestions and approval of the ever- 
sympathetic sister and friend. Wordsworth has de- 
scribed this as a " very pleasant and productive time " 
of his life. 

It was during one of the short tours of Wordsworth 
and Coleridge, with the bright and faithful Dorothy by 
their side, inspiring and stimulating (the expenses of 
which tour they desired to defray by writing a poem), 
that the story of " The Ancient Mariner " was con- 
ceived. Wordsworth has said of it in a passage oft- 
repeated : — 

" In the autumn of 1 79 7, Mr. Coleridge, my sister, 
and myself, started from Alfoxden pretty late in the 
afternoon, with a view of visiting Linton and the valley 
of stones near it ; and as our united funds were very 
small, we agreed to defray the expense of the tour by 
writing a poem, to be sent to the new Monthly Maga- 
zine. In the course of this walk was planned the 
poem of ' The Ancient Mariner,' founded on a dream, 
as Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend, Mr. Cruikshank. 
Much the greatest part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's 
invention ; but certain parts I suggested. For ex- 
ample, some crime to be committed, which was to 
bring upon the Old Navigator, as Coleridge afterwards 
delighted to call him, the spectral persecution, as a 
consequence of that crime and his own wanderings. 
I had been reading in ' Shelvocke's Voyages,' a day 
or two before, that, while doubling Cape Horn, they 



RESIDENCE AT ALFOXDEN. 45 

frequently saw albatrosses in that latitude — the largest 
sort of sea-fowl, some extending their wings 12 or 13 
feet. Suppose, said I, you represent him as having 
killed one of these birds on entering the South Sea, 
and that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon 
them to avenge the crime. The incident was thought 
fitting for the purpose, and adopted accordingly. I 
also suggested the navigation of the ship by the dead 
men ; but I do not recollect that I had any thing more 
to do with the scheme of the poem." 

It was about this time that the Wordsworths made 
the acquaintance of Hazlitt. He was then staying 
with Coleridge, who took him over to Alfoxden. Of 
this visit Hazlitt says : — 

" Wordsworth himself was from home ; but his sister 
kept house, and set before us a frugal repast ; and we 
had free access to her brother's poems, the lyrical 
ballads, which were still in manuscript, or in the form 
of sibylline leaves. I dipped into a few of these with 
great satisfaction, and with the faith of a novice. I 
slept that night in an old room, with blue hangings, 
and covered with the round-faced family portraits, of 
the age of George I. and II., and from the woody 
declivity of the adjoining park that overlooked my 
window, at the dawn of day, 

' Heard the loud stag speak.' 

" Next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we 
strolled out into the park, and, seating ourselves on 
the trunk of an old ash tree, that stretched along the 
ground, Coleridge read aloud, with a sonorous and 



46 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

musical voice, the ballad of ' Betty Foy.' 1 was not 
critically or sceptically inclined. I saw touches of 
truth and nature, and took the rest for granted. But in 
'The Thorn/ 'The Mad Mother,' and 'The Com- 
plaint of the Poor Indian Woman,' I felt tnat deeper 
power and pathos, which have been since acknowl- 
edged, 

1 In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,' 

as the characteristics of this author, and the sense of 
a new style and a new spirit in poetry, came over me. 
It had to me something of the effect that arises from 
the turning up of the fresh soil, or of the first welcome 
breath of spring, 

' While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed.' 

" Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that 
evening, and his voice sounded high, 

' Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate ; 
Fixt fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,' 

as we passed through the echoing groves, by fairy 
stream or waterfall, gleaming in the solemn moonlight. 
. . . We went over to Alfoxden again the day follow- 
ing, and Wordsworth read us the story of ' Peter Bell ' 
in the open air. There is a chant in the recitation, 
both of Coleridge and Wordsworth, which acts as a 
spell upon the hearer, and disarms the judgment. 
Perhaps they have deceived themselves by making 



RESIDENCE AT ALFOXDEN. 47 

habitual use of this ambiguous accompaniment. Cole- 
ridge's manner is more full, animated, and varied ; 
Wordsworth's more equable, sustained, and internal. 
Coleridge has told me that he himself liked to com- 
pose in walking over uneven ground, or breaking 
through the straggling branches of a copsewood, 
whereas Wordsworth always composed walking up and 
down a straight gravel walk, or in some spot where the 
continuity of his verse met with no collateral interrup- 
tions. . . . Returning the same evening, I got into a 
metaphysical argument with Wordsworth, while Cole- 
ridge was explaining the different notes of the nightin- 
gale to his sister, in which we neither of us succeeded 
m making ourselves perfectly clear and intelligible." 

This year was also celebrated by an introduction to 
Charles Lamb (the quaint and gentle-hearted " Elia") 
and his excellent sister Mary. Lamb was an old 
schoolfellow, and a close friend of Coleridge. They 
had been boys together at the Christ's Hospital, where 
the sympathy between them had been formed which 
became a life-long bond. A short emancipation from 
the toils of the East India House found Lamb and his 
sister spending a little time with Coleridge at Nether 
Stowey. From the time of the commencement of the 
acquaintance of Mary Lamb and Dorothy Wordsworth 
in this manner, their friendship was constant and their 
correspondence frequent. While, in temperament, 
they were totally unlike each other, there was that in 
the tenor of their lives, in the tender and helpful devo- 
tion of each of them to her brother — a devotion in 
both cases so warmly reciprocated — together with 



48 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

much in common in their tastes and pursuits, which 
served to cement a friendship begun under such pleas- 
urable circumstances. 

The poem "To my Sister," written in front of 
Alfoxden, is suggestive of the happy rural life at this 
time enjoyed by the poet and his sister. What lover 
of Wordsworth does not remember how on " the first 
mild day of March," when, to the receptive spirit of 
the poet, each minute of the advancing, balmy day 
appeared to be lovelier than the preceding one, while, 
sauntering on the lawn, he wrote, desiring her to hasten 
with her household morning duties, and share his 
enjoyment of the genial sunshine? 

" It is the first mild day of March : 
Each minute sweeter than before. 
The red-breast sings from the tall larch 
That stands beside our door. 

"There is a blessing in the air, 

Which seems a sense of joy to yield 
To the bare trees, and mountains bare, 
And grass in the green field. 

"My sister ! ('tis a wish of mine), 

Now that our morning meal is done, 
Make haste, your morning task resign ; 
Come forth and feel the sun. 

"'Edward will come with you —and, pray, 
Put on with speed your woodland dress ; 
And bring no book ; for this one day 
We'll give to idleness. 



RESIDENCE AT A LEO XD EN. 49 

"'No joyless forms shall regulate 
Our living calendar : 
We from to-day, my Friend, will date 
The opening of the year. 

" ' Love, now a universal birth, 

From heart to heart is stealing, 
From earth to man, from man to earth ; 
— It is the hour of feeling. 

" ' One moment now may give us more 
Than years of toiling reason : 
Our minds shall drink at every pore 
The spirit of the season. 

" ' Some silent laws our hearts will make, 
Which they shall long obey ; 
We for the year to come may take 
Our temper from to-day. 

" ' And from the blessed power that rolls 
About, below, above, 
We'll frame the measure of our souls : 
They shall be tuned to love. 

" ' Then come, my Sister ! come, I pray, 

With speed put on your woodland dress ; 
And bring no book : for this one day 
We'll give to idleness.' " 

It was also during their residence at Alfoxden that 
Miss Wordsworth and her brother made their tour on 
the banks of the Wye, so signally memorialized in his 
famous lines on Tintern Abbey, of which he says, no 
poem of his was composed under circumstances more 
pleasant for him to remember. Its elevating reflec- 
tions and rhythmic strains take captive the affections 



50 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

of the lover of Nature, and linger in his memory like 
the music of youth. In this place our interest in it 
arises from the allusions it contains to his beloved 
companion. He refers to the sweet sensations which, 
in hours of weariness in towns and cities, he has owed 
to the beauteous forms of Nature to which his mind 
has turned. He calls to memory the time when he 
had, indeed, loved Nature more passionately, and 
compares it with his present more mature and thought- 
ful affection, concluding with a fervid address to her 
who was by his side, and whose presence imparted an 
added charm — that of double vision — to every object 
and feeling ; a sense of blessing shared : — 



"For thou art with me here upon the banks 
Of this fair river : thou, my dearest Friend, 
My dear, dear Friend ; and in thy voice I catch 
The language of my former heart, and read 
My former pleasures in the shooting lights 
Of thy wild eyes. Oh ! yet a little while 
May I behold in thee what I was once, 
My dear, dear Sister ! And this prayer I make, 
Knowing that Nature never did betray 
The heart that loved her ; 'tis her privilege 
Thro' all the years of this our life, to lead 
From joy to joy : for she can so inform 
The mind that is within us, so impress 
With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
The dreary intercourse of daily life, 
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold 



RESIDENCE AT ALFOXDEN. 5 I 

Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon 

Shine on thee in thy solitary walk ; 

And let the misty mountain-winds be free 

To blow against thee ; and, in after years, 

When these wild ecstasies shall be matured 

Into a sober pleasure ; when thy mind 

Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, 

Thy memory be as a dwelling-place 

For all sweet sounds and harmonies ; oh ! then, 

If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, 

Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts 

Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, 

And these, my exhortations ! Nor, perchance, 

If I should be where I no more can hear 

Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams 

Of past existence — wilt thou then forget 

That on the banks of this delightful stream 

We stood together. . . . 

Nor wilt thou then forget 
That after many wanderings, many years 
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, 
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me 
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake ! " 

Although Coleridge was at this time married, his 
wife does not seem to have entered very warmly into 
his pursuits — ■ not, indeed, with the same interest that 
Miss Wordsworth did. It cannot be out of place, 
since it is a matter of almost common knowledge, to 
remark that we have in Coleridge one more instance of 
the many men of genius who have not been very suit- 
ably mated. Mrs. Coleridge did not feel the sympathy 
in her husband's aims to enable her to take pleasure 
in their intellectual conversations or perpetual rambles. 
In both of these Miss Wordsworth delighted. De 



52 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

Quincey, in his uncontrollable propensity to chatter, 
has taken occasion from this fact to suggest that Mrs. 
Coleridge resented the familiar friendship of the poetic 
trio. Although not mentioning Miss Wordsworth by 
name, he refers to a young lady who became a neigh- 
bor and a daily companion of Coleridge's walks, and 
who was " intellectually much superior to Mrs. Cole- 
ridge," in a way that shows that none other than Miss 
Wordsworth could be alluded to. He adds : " Mrs. 
Coleridge, not having the same relish for long walks 
or rural scenery, and their residence being at this time 
in a very sequestered village, was condemned to a daily 
renewal of this trial. Accidents of another kind em- 
bittered it still further. Often it would happen that 
the walking party returned drenched with rain ; in 
which case the young lady, with a laughing gayety, 
and evidently unconscious of any liberty that she was 
taking, or any wound that she was inflicting, would 
run up to Mrs. Coleridge's wardrobe, array herself, 
without leave asked, in Mrs. Coleridge's dresses, and 
make herself merry with her own unceremoniousness 
and Mrs. Coleridge's gravity. In all this she took no 
liberty that she would not most readily have granted 
in return ; she confided too unthinkingly in what she 
regarded as the natural privileges of friendship, and as 
little thought that she had been receiving or exacting 
a favor as, under an exchange of their relative posi- 
tions, she would have claimed to confer one." Al- 
though De Quincey states that the feelings of Mrs. 
Coleridge were moderated by the consideration of the 
kind-heartedness of the young lady, that she was 



RESIDENCE AT ALFOXDEiV. 53 

always attended by her brother, and that mere intel- 
lectual sympathies in reference to literature and nat- 
ural scenery associated them, it is to be regretted that 
the perfectly innocent friendship should have been the 
cause of this small gossip, a thing in which De Quincey 
rather delighted, and which sometimes mars the 
pleasurableness of his otherwise felicitous recollections. 
He was not at this time acquainted either with Cole- 
ridge or the Wordsworths, and the information could 
only have been derived from them during subsequent 
years of confidential friendship, and not intended for 
repetition. However it may have appeared to her 
then, Mrs. Coleridge had in the future much cause to 
be thankful for the disinterested friendship of Miss 
Wordsworth. 

How conducive to the best interests of her brother 
at this time was the companionship of Miss Words- 
worth, and how complete was his restoration to a 
healthy and vigorous life after the political distractions 
of his Continental experience, we gather from an allu- 
sion in the Biographia Literaria of Coleridge. Re- 
ferring to his life at Nether Stowey, he says : " I was 
so fortunate as to acquire, shortly after my settlement 
there, an invaluable blessing in the society of one to 
whom I could look up with equal reverence, whether 
I regarded him as a poet, a philosopher, or a man. 
His conversation extended to almost all subjects, ex- 
cept physics and politics ; with the latter he never 
troubled himself." 

The residence of Miss Wordsworth aud her poet 
brother at Alfoxden, was terminated by circumstances 



54 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

which serve to illustrate at once something of the 
political attitude of the times, and also of the mental 
condition of their rustic neighbors in Somersetshire. 
Coleridge tells an amusing story how he and Words- 
worth were followed and watched in their rambles by 
a person who was suspected to be a spy on their pro- 
ceedings employed by the Government of the day. 
Whether this be well founded or not, the mere fact 
of two men living in their midst, without any apparent 
object, appears to have rather discomposed their neigh- 
bors. Why should they be continually spending their 
time in taking long and apparently purposeless ram- 
bles, engaged in earnest conversation ? It was incon- 
ceivable that any one should walk a few miles in the 
light of the moon merely to look at the sea ! They 
must be engaged in smuggling, or have other nefarious 
designs. In connection with this subject, there is one 
good story told. Some country gentlemen of the 
neighborhood happened to be in the company of a 
party who were discussing the question whether Words- 
worth and Coleridge might be traitors, and in corre- 
spondence with the French Administration, when one 
of them answered : " Oh ! as to that Coleridge, he is a 
rattlebrain that will say more in a week than he will 
stand to in a twelvemonth. But Wordsworth, he is 
the traitor. Why, bless you ! he is so close that you'll 
never hear him open his lips on the subject from year's 
end to year's end." The public belief in the absurd 
theory of Wordsworth's traitorous designs was, how- 
ever, sufficient to induce the owner of the mansion in 
which he lived to put an end to the occupation. 



RESIDENCE AT ALFOXDEN. 55 

The reputation of his friends and visitors suffered 
with his. In allusion to this, Mr. Howitt says : " The 
grave and moral Wordsworth, the respectable Wedge- 
woods, the correct Robert Southey, and Coleridge, 
dreaming of glorious intellectualities beyond the moon, 
were set down for a very disreputable gang. Innocent 
Mrs. Coleridge and poor Dolly Wordsworth were seen 
strolling about with them, and were pronounced no 
better than they should be. Such was the character 
that they unconsciously acquired that Wordsworth was 
at length actually driven out of the country." 

It may not be out of place to repeat here Mr. Cot- 
tle's version of the affair. He says : " Mr. Wordsworth 
had taken the Alfoxden house, near Stowey, for one 
year (during the minority of the heir), and the reason 
why he was refused a continuance by the ignorant man 
who had the letting of it arose, as Mr. Coleridge in- 
formed me, from a whimsical cause, or rather a series 
of causes. The wiseacres of the village had, it seemed, 
made Mr. Wordsworth the subject of their serious con- 
versation. One said that he had seen him wandering 
about by night and look rather strange at the moon ! 
And then he roamed over the hills like a partridge ! 
Another said he had heard him mutter, as he walked, 
in some outlandish brogue that nobody could under- 
stand ! Another said : ' It is useless to talk, Thomas. 
I think he is what people call a wise man (a conjurer).' 
Another said : ' You are every one of you wrong. I 
know what he is. We have all met him tramping away 
toward the sea. Would any man in his senses take all 
that trouble to look at a parcel of water ? I think he 



$6 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

carries on a snug business in the smuggling line, and 
in these journeys is on the look-out for some wet 
cargo ! ' Another very significantly said : * I know 
that he has got a private still in his cellar ; for I once 
passed his house at a little better than a hundred yards' 
distance, and I could smell the spirits as plain as an 
ashen faggot at Christmas ! ' Another said : ' How- 
ever that was, he was surely a desperd (desperate) 
French Jacobin ; for he is so silent and dark that no- 
body ever heard him say one word about politics ! ' 
And thus these ignoramuses drove from their village a 
greater ornament than will ever again be found amongst 
them." 

After leaving Alfoxden, in the autumn of 1 798, Miss 
Wordsworth accompanied her brother during a resi- 
dence of six months in Germany, their chief object 
being the attainment of a knowledge of the language. 
Although, from the absence of society at Goslar, where 
they were, they do not seem to have been fortunately 
circumstanced in this respect, Wordsworth was, accord- 
ing to his sister, very industrious, and here composed 
several poems. 

Their life in Germany was not altogether without 
adventure. Mr. Howitt gives an account of an inci- 
dent related to him by the poet of his arriving late one 
evening, accompanied by Miss Wordsworth and Cole- 
ridge, at a hamlet in Hesse Cassel, where they were 
unable to gain admittance to the inn, and feared hav- 
ing to pass the night in the open street. A continued 
knocking at the inhospitable doors only brought out 
the landlord armed with a huge cudgel, with which he 



REMOVAL TO GRASMERE. S7 

began to beat them. Regardless of their personal dan- 
ger, and thinking of their female companion, to whom 
the prospect of an inclement night in the open air was 
by no means cheering, Wordsworth and his friend man- 
aged, after warding off the blows of the cudgel, to force 
their way into the house, and by reasoning with the 
surly landlord, and appealing to his better feelings, 
induced him to afford them a scanty lodging for the 
night. It appears that strangers travelling in these 
remote parts at this time received scant courtesy, even 
from those professing to provide them with entertain- 
ment, and that personal violence and plunder were not 
unfrequently resorted to. 

On returning to England in the spring of 1799, 
Wordsworth, after spending some months with friends 
at Sockburn-on-Tees, wisely determined to have a 
fixed place of abode for himself, and, of course, his 
sister ; eventually selecting that spot which is more 
than all others associated with his name and memory. 
A walking tour in company with his friend Coleridge 
in Westmoreland and Cumberland, resulted in his fixing 
upon Grasmere as the future home of himself and his 
faithful sister. To this place they accordingly repaired, 
walking a considerable part of the way — that from 
Wensleydale to Kendal — " accomplishing as much as 
twenty miles in a day over uneven roads, frozen into 
rocks, in the teeth of a keen wind and a driving snow," 
amid the crisp and biting blasts of a winter day, arriv- 
ing at Grasmere — so long the scene of their future 
labors and rambles — on the shortest day of the last 
year in the last century. 



58 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE LAKE DISTRICT. 

THE lake and mountain district of England, which 
has now become so famous, was happily chosen 
by these children of Nature as their residence. Born 
as they both were on its outskirts, they had long been 
familiar with its beauties, and the only matter for sur- 
prise is that they had not earlier turned their faces to 
their native hills instead of spending some intervening 
years elsewhere. 

No region could have been more in harmony with 
their sympathies and pursuits. The hardy inhabitants 
of these dales, and the simplicity of their lives and 
manners, formed fitting objects of study and reflection 
for the single-minded poet of Nature, who came to 
live and die amongst them. It is quite unnecessary, 
in these days of travel and of guide-books, which have 
done so much to make the district familiar ground, to 
give any description of it. It may not, however, be 
out of place to quote an extract or two from Woods- 
worth's own Description of the lakes. Referring to 
the aspect of the district at different seasons of the 
year, he says : — "It has been said that in human life 
there are moments worth ages. In a more subdued 



THE LAKE DISTRICT. 59 

tone of sympathy may we affirm that in the climate of 
England there are, for the lover of Nature, days which 
are worth whole months — I might say even years. 
One of these favored days sometimes occurs in spring- 
time, when that soft air is breathing over the blossoms 
and new-born verdure which inspired Buchanan with 
his beautiful ' Ode to the First of May ' ; the air which, 
in the luxuriance of his fancy, he likens to that of the 
golden age — to that which gives motion to the funereal 
cypresses on the banks of Lethe ; to the air which is 
to salute beatified spirits when expiatory fires shall have 
consumed the earth, with all her habitations. But it 
is in autumn that days of such affecting influence most 
frequently intervene. The atmosphere becomes re- 
fined, and the sky rendered more crystalline, as the 
vivifying heat of the year abates ; the lights and shad- 
ows are more delicate ; the coloring is richer and more 
finely harmonized ; and, in this season of stillness, the 
ear being unoccupied, or only gently excited, the sense 
of vision becomes more susceptible of its appropriate 
enjoyments. A resident in a country like this we are 
treating of will agree with me that the presence of a 
lake is indispensable to exhibit in perfection the beauty 
of one of these days ; and he must have experienced, 
while looking on the unruffled waters, that the imagi- 
nation by their aid is carried into recesses of feeling 
otherwise impenetrable. The reason of this is that 
the heavens are not only brought down into the bosom 
of the earth, but that the earth is mainly looked at, 
and thought of, through the medium of a purer ele- 
ment. The happiest time is when the equinoctial gales 



60 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

are departed ; but their fury may probably be called 
to mind by the sight of a few shattered boughs, whose 
leaves do not differ in color from the faded foliage of 
the stately oaks from which these relics of the storm 
depend ; all else speaks of tranquillity ; not a breath 
of air, no restlessness of insects, and not a moving 
object perceptible, except the clouds gliding in the 
depth of the lake, or the traveller passing along, an 
inverted image, whose motion seems governed by the 
quiet of a time to which its archetype, the living per- 
son, is perhaps insensible ; or it may happen that the 
figure of one of the larger birds — a raven or a heron 
— is crossing silently among the reflected clouds, while 
the voice of the real bird, from the element aloft, gently 
awakens in the spectator the recollection of appetites 
and instincts, pursuits and occupations, that deform 
and agitate the world, yet have no power to prevent 
Nature from putting on an aspect capable of satisfying 
the most intense cravings for the tranquil, the lovely, 
and the perfect, to which man, the noblest of her 
creatures, is subject." 

His description of the Cumbrian cottages — 

" Clustered like stars some few, but single most, 
And lurking dimly in their slry retreats, 
Or glancing on each other cheerful looks, 
Like separated stars with clouds between — " 

is exceedingly happy. 

" The dwelling-houses and contiguous outhouses are, 
in many instances, of the color of the native rock, out 
of which they have been built ; but frequently the 



THE LAKE DISTRICT. 6 1 

dwelling, or fire-house as it is ordinarily called, has 
been distinguished from the barn or byre by rough- 
cast and whitewash, which, as the inhabitants are not 
hasty in renewing it, in a few years acquires, by the 
influence of weather, a tint at once sober and varie- 
gated. As these houses have been, from father to son, 
inhabited by persons engaged in the same occupations, 
yet necessarily with changes in their circumstances, 
they have received without incongruity additions and 
accommodations adapted to the needs of each suc- 
cessive occupant, who, being for the most part pro- 
prietor, was at liberty to follow his own fancy ; so that 
these humble dwellings remind the contemplative spec- 
tator of a production of Nature, and may (using a 
strong expression) rather be said to have grown than 
to have been erected — to have risen, by an instinct 
of their own, out of the native rock — so little is there 
of formality, such is their wildness and beauty. Among 
the numerous recesses and projections in the walls, and 
in the different stages of their roofs, are seen bold and 
harmonious effects of contrasted sunshine and shadow. 
It is a favorable circumstance that the strong winds 
which sweep down the valleys induced the inhabitants, 
at a time when the materials for building were easily 
procured, to furnish many of these dwellings with sub- 
stantial porches ; and such as have not this defence 
are seldom unprovided with a projection of two large 
slates over their thresholds. Nor will the singular 
beauty of the chimneys escape the eye of the attentive 
traveller. Sometimes a low chimney, almost upon a 
level with the roof, is overlaid with a slate, supported 



62 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

upon four slender pillars, to prevent the wind from 
driving the smoke down the chimney. Others are of 
a quadrangular shape, rising one or two feet above the 
roof; which low square is often surmounted by a tall 
cylinder, giving to the cottage chimney the most beau- 
tiful shape in which it is ever seen. Nor will it be too 
fanciful or refined to remark that there is a pleasing 
harmony between a tall chimney of this circular form, 
and the living column of smoke, ascending from it 
through the still air. These dwellings, mostly built, 
as has been said, of rough unhewn stone, are roofed 
with slates, which were rudely taken from the quarry 
before the present art of splitting them was under- 
stood ; and are, therefore, rough and uneven in their 
surface, so that both the coverings and sides of the 
houses have furnished places of rest for the seeds of 
lichens, mosses, ferns, and flowers. Hence buildings, 
which in their very form call to mind the processes of 
Nature, do thus, clothed in part with a vegetable garb, 
appear to be received into the bosom of the living 
principle of things, as it acts and exists among the 
woods and fields ; and, by their color and their shape, 
affectingly direct the thoughts to that tranquil course 
of Nature and simplicity, along which the humble- 
minded inhabitants have, through so many generations, 
been led. Add the little garden with its shed for bee- 
hives, its small bed of pot-herbs, and its borders and 
patches of flowers for Sunday posies, with sometimes 
a choice few too much prized to be plucked ; an 
orchard of proportioned size ; a cheese-press, often 
supported by some tree near the door ; a cluster of 



THE LAKE DISTRICT. 63 

embowering sycamores for summer shade ; with a tall 
fir through which the winds sing when other trees are 
leafless ; the little rill, or household spout, murmuring 
in all seasons ; combine these incidents and images 
together, and you have the representative idea of a 
mountain cottage in this country so beautifully formed 
in itself, and so richly adorned by the hand of Nature. 

" Till within the last sixty years * there was no 
communication between any of these vales by carriage- 
roads; all bulky articles were transported on pack- 
horses. Owing, however, to the population not being 
concentrated in villages, but scattered, the valleys 
themselves were intersected, as now, by innumerable 
lanes and pathways leading from house to house and 
from field to field. These lanes, where they are fenced 
by stone walls, are mostly bordered with ashes, hazels, 
wild roses, and beds of tall fern, at their base ; while 
the walls themselves, if old, are overspread with 
mosses, small ferns, wild strawberries, the geranium, 
and lichens ; and if the wall happen to rest against a 
bank of earth, it is sometimes almost wholly concealed 
by a rich facing of stone-fern. It is a great advantage 
to a traveller or resident, that these numerous lanes 
and paths, if he be a zealous admirer of Nature, will 
lead him on into all the recesses of the country, so 
that the hidden treasures of its landscapes may, by an 
ever-ready guide, be laid open to his eyes." 

A much more recent writer, Mrs. E. Lynn Linton, 
in her charming work, full of graceful description and 

1 This was written in 1810. 



64 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

exquisite poetry, thus writes of the scenery of one of 
the lakes after a storm : — 

" The woods glittered and sparkled in the sun, each 
dripping branch a spray of golden light, and the light 
was married to the loud music of the birds flowing out 
in rivulets of song. Countless flies shot through the 
air, and vibrated on the water ; and the fish leaped up 
to catch them, dimpling the shining surface with con- 
centric ripples, and throwing up small jets of light in 
the smooth black bays. Every crag and stone, and 
line of wall, and tuft of gorse, was visible on the nearer 
hills, where the coloring was intense and untranslatable ; 
and on the more distant mountains, we could see, as 
through a telescope, the scars on the steeps, the slaty 
shingles, and the straight cleavings down the sides, the 
old gray watercourses, threaded now like a silver line 
— those silver lines, after the storm, over all the craggy 
faces everywhere ; we could see each green knoll set 
like an island among the gray bowlders, each belt of 
mountain wood, each purple rift, each shadowed pass, 
slope and gully, and ghyll and scaur — we could count 
them all glistening in the sun, or clear and tender in 
the shade ; while the sky was of a deep, pure blue 
above, and the cumulus clouds were gathered into 
masses white and dazzling as marble, and almost as 
solid-looking. 

" And over all, and on all, and lying in the heart of 
every thing, warming, creating, fashioning the dead 
matter into all lovely forms, and driving the sweet 
juices like blood through the veins of the whole of 
earth, shone the glad sun, free, boundless, loving — 



THE LAKE DISTRICT. 65 

life of the world's life, glory of its glory, shaper and 
creator of its brightest beauty. Silver on the lake, 
gold in the wood, purple over the hills, white and 
lazuli in the heavens — what infinite splendor hanging 
through this narrow valley ! What a wealth of love 
and beauty pouring out for the heart of all Nature, and 
for the diviner soul of man ! " 

Of the mountain tarns, which in their solitary gran- 
deur gleam like diamonds, she writes : — 

" It is very lovely to watch the ripple of a tarn : a 
wonderful lesson in wave curvature, if small in scale, 
yet as true as the wildest ocean storm could give 
Ever changing in line, and yet so uniform in law, the 
artist and the hydrographer might learn some valuable 
truths from half a day's study of one of these small 
mountain sheets of water. Now the broad, smooth, 
silky curves flow steadily across ; now a fine network 
spreads over these, and again another network, smaller 
and finer still, breaks up the rest into a thousand frag- 
ments j then the tarn bursts out into tiny silver spangles, 
like a girl's causeless laughter ; and then comes a gray 
sweep across the water, as if it shivered in the wind ; 
and then again all subsides, and the long, silky flow 
sets in again, with quiet shadows and play of green 
and gray in the transparent shallows. It is like a large 
diamond set in emerald ; for the light of the water is 
radiance simply, not color ; and the grass, with the 
sun striking through, is as bright as an emerald." 

If one more extract from Mrs. Linton may be culled, 
it is to the following reflections that a day spent on 
Helvellyn gives rise : — 



66 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

" Ah ! what a world lies below ! But grand as it is 
on the earth, it is mated by the grandeur of the sky. 
For the cloud scenery is of such surpassing nobleness 
while it lasts, and before it is drawn up into one volume 
of intensest blue, that no kind or manner of discord 
mars the day's power and loveliness. Of all forms and 
of all colors are those gracious summer clouds, ranging 
from roseate flakes of dazzling white masses and torn 
black remnants, like the last fragments of a widow's 
weeds ihrust aside for her maturer bridal ; from solid 
substances, firm and marble-like, to light baby curls 
set like pleasant smiles about the graver faces : words 
and pictures, in all their changes, unspeakably precious 
to soul and sense. And when, finally, they all gather 
themselves away, and leave the sky a vault of un- 
dimmed blue, and leave the earth a gorgeous picture 
of human industry and dwelling — when field and 
plain, and mountain and lake, and tarn and river are 
fashioned into the beauty of a primeval earth by the 
purity of the air and the governing strength of the sun 
and the fragrant sweetness of the summer, and when 
the very gates of heaven seem opening for our entering 
where the southern sun stands at gaze in his golden 
majesty — is it wonder if there are tears more glad than 
many smiles, and a thrill of love more prayerful than 
many a litany chanted in the church service ? In the 
very passion of delight that pours like wine through 
the veins is a solemn outfall — in the very delicious- 
ness of joy an intensity that is almost pain. It is all 
so solemn and so grand, so noble and so loving, surely 
we cannot be less than what we live in ! 






THE LAKE DISTRICT. 67 

" Let any one haunted by small cares, by fears worse 
than cares, and by passions worse than either, go up on 
a mountain height on such a summer's day as this, and 
there confront his soul with the living soul of Nature. 
Will the stately solitude not calm him ? Can the noble- 
ness of beauty not raise him to like nobleness? Is 
there no Divine voice for him in the absolute stillness ? 
No loving hand guiding through the pathless wilds? 
No tenderness for man in the lavishness of Nature? 
Have the clouds no lesson of strength in their soft- 
ness? the sun no cheering in its glory? Has the 
earth no hymn in all its living murmur? the air no 
shaping in its clearness? the wind no healing in its 
power? Can he stand in the midst of that great 
majesty the sole small thing, and shall his spirit, which 
should be the noblest thing of all, let itself be crippled 
by self and fear, till it lies crawling on the earth when 
its place is lifting to the heavens ? Oh ! better than 
written sermon or spoken exhortation is one hour on 
the lonely mountain tops, when the world seems so far 
off, and God and His angels so near. Into the Temple 
of Nature flows the light of the Shekinah, pure and 
strong and holy, and they are wisest who pass into it 
oftenest, and rest within its glory longest. There was 
never a church more consecrated to all good ends 
than the stone waste on Helvellyn top, where you sit 
beneath the sun and watch the bright world lying in 
radiant peace below, and the quiet and sacred heavens 
above." 

Probably there is no spot of English ground to 
which more pilgrimages have, during the last half- 



68 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

century, been made than the vale of Grasraere, which 
has for all time been rendered classic by the residence 
therein of Wordsworth and those sons of genius who 
loved to gather around him ; and almost every promi- 
nent object and scene in which has been immortalized 
by his pen. 

To lovers of his poetry the spirit of Wordsworth 
yet casts a spell over the landscape ; and mountain 
and vale and lake are almost as articulate to the hear- 
ing ear as are the storied stones of Rome. But Life's 
grandest music is audible only to the ready ear. It is 
to the " inward eye " of love, gathering its treasured 
harvest, that the brightest halo is revealed. Earth 

may be 

"Crammed with heaven," — 
" But only he who sees takes off his shoes." 

As Nature whispers her secrets to her true lovers ; so 
it is to the searching eye that the historic pile presents 
a vision of years, and the decaying cottage or hoary 
mountain speaks of those who consecrated its stones 
or roamed beneath its shade. 

Apart, however, from the interest which attaches to 
this locality from its many cherished associations, it is 
of unsurpassed beauty and loveliness. The scenery 
of this favored district, so pleasingly varied as to in- 
spire at once with gladness and awe, to thrill with 
rapture or to charm into repose, culminates in the 
transcendent loveliness of the mountain-guarded vale 
of Grasmere. It takes captive the affections like the 
features of a familiar friend. 

The poet Gray, writing concerning it more than a 



THE LAKE DISTRICT. 69 

century ago, says : " Passed by the little chapel of 
Wiborn [Wythburn], out of which the Sunday con- 
gregation were then issuing. Passed by a beck near 
Dunmail Raise, and entered Westmoreland a second 
time ; now began to see Helm crag, distinguished from 
its rugged neighbors, not so much by its height, as by 
the strange, broken outline of its top, like some gigan- 
tic building demolished, and the stones that composed 
it flung across each other in wild confusion. Just 
beyond it opens one of the sweetest landscapes that 
Art ever attempted to imitate. The bosom of the 
mountains here spreading into a broad basin, discovers 
in the midst Grasmere Water ; its margin is hollowed 
into small bays, with eminences, some of rock, some 
of soft turf, that half conceal and half vary the figure 
of the little lake they command. From the shore a 
low promontory pushes itself into the water, and on it 
stands a white village, with a parish church rising in 
the midst of it, having enclosures, cornfields, and 
meadows, green as an emerald, which, with trees, and 
hedges, and cattle, fill up the whole space from the 
edge of the water, and just opposite to you is a large 
farmhouse at the bottom of a steep, smooth lawn, 
embosomed in old woods, which climb half way up 
the mountain sides, and discover above a broken line 
of crags that crown the scene. Not a single red tile, 
no staring gentleman's house, breaks in upon the re- 
pose of this unsuspected paradise ; but all is peace, 
rusticity, and happy poverty, in its sweetest, most 
becoming attire." 

This description must, of course, at the present day 



JO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

be somewhat modified. The scene upon which the eyes 
of the author of the Elegy rested is now varied by many 
residences and signs of human contact then absent. 

In an account of a visit to Grasmere at a much 
later period, the late Nathaniel Hawthorne says : '"'This 
little town seems to me as pretty a place as ever I met 
with in my life. It is quite shut in by hills that rise 
up immediately around it, like a neighborhood of 
kindly giants. These hills descend steeply to the 
verge of the level on which the village stands, and 
there they terminate at once, the whole site of the 
little town being as even as a floor. I call it a village, 
but it is no village at all ; all the dwellings stand apart, 
each in its own little domain, and each, I believe, 
with its own little lane leading to it, independently of 
the rest. Many of these are old cottages, plastered 
white, with antique porches, and roses, and other 
vines, trained against them, and shrubbery growing 
about them, and some are covered with ivy. There 
are a few edifices of more pretension and of modern 
build, but not so strikingly as to put the rest out of 
countenance. The Post Office, when we found it, 
proved to be an ivied cottage, with a good deal of 
shrubbery round it, having its own pathway, like the 
other cottages. The whole looks like a real seclusion, 
shut out from the great world by those encircling hills, 
on the sides of which, whenever they are not too 
steep, you see the division lines of property and tokens 
of cultivation — taking from them their pretensions 
of savage majesty, but bringing them nearer to the 
heart of man." 



" Only a sister's part — yes, that was all ; 

And yet her life was bright, and full, and free. 
She did not feel, ' I give up all for him ; ' 
She only knew, ' ? Tis mine his friend to be.' 

" So what she saw and felt the poet sang — 

She did not seek the world should know her share; 
Her one great hunger was for ' William's ' fame, 
To give his thoughts a voice her life-long prayer. 

" And when with wife and child his days were crowned 
She did not feel that she was left alone, 
Glad in their joy, she shared their every care, 
And only thought of baby as 'our own.' 

" His ' dear, dear sister,' that was all she asked, 
Her gentle ministry, her only fame ; 
But when we read his page with grateful heart, 
Between the lines we'll spell out Dora's name." 

— Anon, in The Spectator* 
7i 



LIFE AT GRASMERE. J$ 



CHAPTER VI. 

LIFE AT GRASMERE. 

THE unpretentious cottage which became the first 
Grasmere home of Wordsworth and his sister in 
those days when they were still sole companions, 
though changed in its surroundings, is happily still 
allowed to retain its old features. It stands on the 
right of the highway, just on the entry into Grasmere, 
on the road from Rydal — the old coach road — a 
little distance beyond the " Wishing Gate," and at the 
part of the village called Town End. It was formerly 
an inn, called " The Dove and Olive Bough," and is 
still known by the name of Dove Cottage. It over- 
looks from the front the beauteous lake of Grasmere, 
though the view from the lower rooms is now consider- 
ably obstructed by buildings since erected. Behind 
is a small garden and orchard, in which is a spring of 
pure water, round which the primroses and daffodils 
bloom, as they did when lovingly reared by Miss 
Wordsworth. A dozen steps or so, cut in the rocky 
slope, lead up to a little terrace walk, on a bit of moun- 
tain ground, enclosed in the domain, and sheltered in 
the rear by a fir-clad wood. Altogether it was an 
ideal cottage-home for the enthusiastic young couple. 



74 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

From the orchard are obtained views almost unrivalled 
of mountain, vale, and lake, embracing the extensive 
range from Helm Crag and the vales of Easedale and 
Wythburn, down to the wooded heights of Loughrigg. 
Words cannot do justice to the idyllic sweetness and 
beauty of this poet's home, as it must have been when 
Wordsworth described his chosen retreat as the 

" Loveliest spot that man hath ever found." 

The " sweet garden-orchard, eminently fair," has 
now, however, a neglected appearance, and must be 
very different from the time when the loving hands of 
the poet and his sister carefully tended the trees and 
flowers, of which he says : — 

" This plot of orchard ground is ours, 
My trees they are, my sister's flowers." 

De Quincey speaks of the house as being immortal 
in his remembrance — just two bow shots from the 
water — "a little white cottage, gleaming in the midst 
of trees, with a vast and seemingly never-ending series 
of ascents rising above it, to the height of more than 
three thousand feet." 

Wordsworth's satisfaction at finding himself, at 
length, in the companionship of his beloved sister, in 
this his first permanent and peaceful abode, is thus 
expressed in a portion of a poem which was intended 
to form part of the " Recluse," of which, as is well 
known, the Prelude and the Excursion only were com- 
pleted. I am indebted for the extract to the " Me- 



LIFE AT GRASMERE. 75 

moirs of Wordsworth," by the late Bishop of Lincoln. 
It will be observed that the poet's ardent attachment 
to his sister was in no degree abated, and that he un- 
grudgingly bestowed upon her the generous praise so 
much merited : — 



" On Nature's invitation do I come, 
By Reason sanctioned. Can the choice mislead, 
That made the calmest, fairest spot on earth, 
With all its unappropriated good, 
My own, and not mine only, for with me 
Entrenched — say rather, peacefully embowered — 
Under yon orchard, in yon humble cot, 
A younger orphan of a home extinct, 
The only daughter of my parents dwells ; 
Aye, think on that, my heart, and cease to stir; 
Pause upon that, and let the breathing frame 
No longer breathe, but all be satisfied. 
Oh, if such silence be not thanks to God 
For what hath been bestowed, then where, where then 
Shall gratitude find rest ? Mine eyes did ne'er 
Fix on a lovely object, nor my mind 
Take pleasure in the midst of happy thought, 
But either she, whom now I have, who now 
Divides with me that loved abode, was there, 
Or not far off. Where'er my footsteps turned, 
Her voice was like a hidden bird that sang; 
The thought of her was like a flash of light 
Or an unseen companionship, a breath 
Or fragrance independent of the wind. 
In all my goings, in the new and old 
Of all my meditations, and in this 
Favorite of all, in this, the most of all. . . . 
Embrace me, then, ye hills, and close me in. 
Now, on the clear and open day I feel 
Your guardianship : I take it to my heart; 



?6 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

'Tis like the solemn shelter of the night. 

But I would call thee beautiful ; for mild 

And soft, and gay, and beautiful thou art, 

Dear valley, having in thy face a smile, 

Though peaceful, full of gladness. Thou art pleased, 

Pleased with thy crags, and woody steeps, thy lake, 

Its one green island, and its winding shores, 

The multitude of little rocky hills, 

Thy church, and cottages of mountain stone 

Clustered like stars some few, but single most 

And lurking dimly in their shy retreats, 

Or glancing at each other cheerful looks 

Like separated stars with clouds between." 

The early years of their residence at Grasmere were 
signalized by calm enjoyment, no less than by active 
industry. Miss Wordsworth's life retained its charac- 
teristic unselfishness, its devoted ministry. The cot- 
tage itself was furnished at a cost of about p£ioo — 
a legacy left to her by a relative, and their joint annual 
income at that time amounted to about as much. 
That they were still poor did not detract from their 
happiness, but probably served only to promote it. 
We find this refined, sensitive young woman (she was 
now twenty- eight), engaged very much in domestic 
duties, doing a considerable part of the work of the 
house, without a thought of discontent. Her poetic 
enthusiasm and cultured mind did not unfit her for 
the common duties of life, or detract from her high 
sense of duty and service. Happily she had learnt — 
as every true woman does — that there is no degrada- 
tion in work ; that it is not in the nature of our tasks, 
but the spirit in which they are performed, that the 



LIFE AT GRASMERE. J? 

test of fitness is to be found. Notwithstanding, how- 
ever, her other duties, Miss Wordsworth found time to 
be a true help to her brother. As his amanuensis she 
wrote or transcribed his poems, read to him, and 
accompanied him in his daily walks. She had also 
that rare gift of the perfect companion of being able 
to be silent with and for him, recognizing the appar- 
ently little-known truth that a loved presence is in it- 
self society. In one of his poems, " Personal Talk," 
he says : — 

" I am not one who much or oft delight 
To season my fireside with personal talk, — 
Of friends, who live within an easy walk, 
Or neighbors, daily, weekly, in my sight : 
And, for my chance acquaintance, ladies bright, 
Sons, mothers, maidens withering on the stalk, 
These all wear out of me, like forms with chalk 
Painted on rich men's floors, for one feast-night. 
Better than such discourse doth silence long, 
Long, barren silence, square with my desire ; 
To sit without emotion, hope, or aim, 
In the loved presence of my cottage-fire, 
And listen to the flapping of the flame, 
Or kettle whispering its faint undersong." 

In one of the MSS. notes, alluding to this sonnet, 
Wordsworth has said : " The last line but two stood 
at first better and more characteristically thus : 

" 'By my half-kitchen and half-parlor fire,'" 

And he adds : " My sister and I were in the habit of 
having the tea-kettle in our little sitting-room ; and 
we toasted the bread ourselves, which reminds me of 



?8 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

a little circumstance, not unworthy of being set down 
among these minuticz. Happening both of us to be 
engaged a few minutes one morning, when we had a 
young prig of a Scotch lawyer to breakfast with us, 
my dear sister, with her usual simplicity, put the toast- 
ing fork, with a slice of bread, into the hands of this 
Edinburgh genius. Our little book-case stood on one 
side of the fire. To prevent loss of time he took 
down a book, and fell to reading, to the neglect of the 
toast, which was burnt to a cinder. Many a time have 
we laughed at this circumstance and other cottage 
simplicities of that day." 

Miss Wordsworth, at this period, also kept a diary, 
or journal, which, we are informed, is " full of vivid 
descriptions of natural beauty." The few extracts 
from it which the world has hitherto been allowed to 
see are of deep interest, affording, as they do, a pleas- 
ing picture of their daily occupations, the incidents 
which gave birth to many of her brother's poems, 
and the circumstances under which they were written. 
For the subject of many of them he was indebted to 
her ever-watchful and observant eye, and several were 
composed while wandering over woodland paths, by 
her side. The knowledge of this not only serves to 
remind us of the sustained character of Miss Words- 
worth's directing and controlling influence upon her 
brother, but gives an additional interest to the poems. 
Thus, in her journal, she writes : " William walked to 
Rydal. . . . The lake of Grasmere beautiful. The 
Church an image of peace ; he wrote some lines upon 
it. . . . The mountains indistinct ; the lake calm, and 



LIFE AT GRASMERE. 79 

partly ruffled, a sweet sound of water falling into the 
quiet lake. A storm gathering in Easedale, so we 
returned ; but the moon came out, and opened to us 
the church and village. Helm Crag in shade ; the 
larger mountains dappled like a sky." Again: "We 
went into the orchard after breakfast, and sat there. 
The lake calm, the sky cloudy. William began poem 
on ' The Celandine.' " The next day : " Sowed 
flower-seeds : William helped me. We sat in the 
orchard. W. wrote 'The Celandine.' Planned an 
arbor ; the sun too hot for us." " W. wrote the 
' Leech Gatherer.' " These instances might be multi- 
plied. Wordsworth has himself recorded how that 
about this time he composed his first sonnets, " taking 
fire " one afternoon after his sister had been reading 
to him those of Milton. Her helpful aid, as a literary 
companion, is thus referred to by Mr. Lockhart : " His 
sister, without any of the aids of learned ladies, had a 
refined perception of the beauties of literature, and 
her glowing sympathy and delicate comments cast 
new light upon the most luminous page. Wordsworth 
always acknowledged that it was from her and Cole- 
ridge that his otherwise very independent intellect 
had derived great assistance." 

In a letter, dated September 10, 1800, Miss Words- 
worth thus describes their home and home-life : " We 
are daily more delighted with Grasmere and its neigh- 
borhood. Our walks are perpetually varied, and we 
are more fond of the mountains as our acquaintance 
with them increases. We have a boat upon the lake, 
and a small orchard, and smaller garden, which, as it 



80 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

is the work of our own hands, we regard with pride 
and partiality. Our cottage is quite large enough for 
us, though very small, and we have made it neat and 
comfortable within doors, and it looks very nice on 
the outside ; for though the roses and honeysuckles 
which we have planted against it are only of this year's 
growth, yet it is covered all over with green leaves and 
scarlet flowers ; for we have trained scarlet beans upon 
threads, which are not only exceedingly beautiful but 
very useful, as their produce is immense. We have 
made a lodging-room of the parlor below stairs, which 
has a stone floor, therefore we have covered it all over 
with matting. We sit in a room above stairs ; and we 
have one lodging-room, with two single beds, a sort 
of lumber-room, and a small, low, unceiled room, 
which I have papered with newspapers, and in which 
we have put a small bed. Our servant is an old 
woman of sixty years of age, whom we took partly 
out of charity. She was very ignorant, very foolish, 
and very difficult to teach. But the goodness of her 
disposition, and the great convenience we should find, 
if my perseverance was successful, induced me to 
go on." 

It is recorded in the transactions of the Wordsworth 
Society for 1882, that Professor Knight thus alluded 
to the journals of Miss Wordsworth, written during 
the years 1800, 1801, 1802, and 1803: "These jour- 
nals were a singularly interesting record of ' plain living 
and high thinking ; ' — of very plain living, and of very 
lofty thought, imagination, and feeling. They were 
the best possible commentary on the poems belonging 



LIFE AT GRASMERE. 8 1 

to that period ; because they showed the manner of 
life of the brother and the sister, the character of their 
daily work, the influences of Nature to which they 
were subjected, the homeliness of their ways, and 
the materials on which the poems were based, as well 
as the sources of their inspiration. One read in these 
journals the tales of travelling sailors and pedlars who 
came through the lake country, of gipsy women and 
beggar boys, which were afterwards, if not immediately, 
translated into verse. Then the whole scenery of the 
place and its accessories, the people of Grasmere Vale, 
Wordsworth's neighbors and friends, were photo- 
graphed in that journal. The Church, the lake, its 
Island, John's Grove, White Moss Common, Point 
Rash Judgment, Easedale, Dunmail Raise — every 
thing given in clearest outline and vivid color. Miss 
Wordsworth's delineations of Nature in these daily 
jottings were quite as subtle and minute, quite as 
delicate and ethereal, as any thing in her brother's 
poems. Above all there was in these records a most 
interesting disclosure of Dorothy Wordsworth's friend- 
ship with Coleridge — and a very remarkable friendship 
it was. One also saw the sister's rare appreciation of 
her brother's genius, amounting almost to a reverence 
for it ; and her continuous self-sacrifice that she might 
foster and develop her brother's powers. Well might 
Wordsworth say, ' She gave me eyes, she gave me ears.' 
Another very interesting fact disclosed in those journals 
was the very slow growth of many of the poems, such, 
for example, as ' Michael ' and the ' Excursion,' and 
the constant revisions to which they were subjected." 



82 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

The poem, "To a Young Lady, who had been 
reproached for taking long walks in the country," 
written about this time, was, I am informed on excel- 
lent authority, addressed to Miss Wordsworth. It will 
be observed that the prophecy therein contained did 
not in all respects meet with fulfilment : — 

" Dear Child of Nature, let them rail ! 
— There is a nest in a green dale, 
A harbor and a hold ; 
Where thou, a Wife and Friend, shalt see 
Thy own heart-stirring days, and be 
A light to young and old. 

" There, healthy as a shepherd-boy, 
And treading among flowers of joy, 
Which at no season fade, 
Thou, while thy babes around thee cling, 
Shalt show us how divine a thing 
A Woman may be made. 

"Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die, 
Nor leave thee, when gray hairs are nigh, 
A melancholy slave ; 
But an old age serene and bright, 
And lovely as a Lapland night, 
Shall lead thee to thy grave." 

Thus were passed, in happy converse and mutual 
love and help, the three years which intervened be- 
tween Miss Wordsworth and her brother going to 
Grasmere, and the marriage of the latter. A tour 
which they together made on the Continent in 1802 
pleasantly varied this period. A sonnet of Words- 



LIFE AT GRASMERE. 83 

worth's composed when on this occasion, they were, 
in the early morning, passing Westminster Bridge is 
well known. It is here repeated only that his sister's 
account of her impressions may be placed along with 
it. He says : — 

" Earth hath not any thing to show more fair ; 
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by 
A sight so touching in its majesty; 
This City now doth, like a garment, wear 
The beauty of the morning ; silent, bare, 
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie 
Open unto the fields, and to the sky; 
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. 
Never did sun more beautifully steep 
In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill ; 
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep ! 
The river giideth at his own sweet will : 
Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep ; 
And all that mighty heart is lying still ! " 

Miss Wordsworth in her almost equally graceful 
prose writes : " Left London between five and six 
o'clock of the morning, outside the Dover coach. 
A beautiful morning. The city, St. Paul's, with the 
river — a multitude of boats — made a beautiful sight 
as we crossed Westminster Bridge ; the houses not 
overhung by their clouds of smoke, and were spread 
out endlessly ; yet the sun shone so brightly, with such 
a pure light, that there was something like the purity 
of one of Nature's own grand spectacles." She adds : 
" Arrived at Calais at four in the morning of July 31st. 
Delightful walks in the evening ; seeing, far off in the 



8 4 



DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 



west, the coast of England, like a cloud, crested with 
Dover Castle, the evening star and the glory of the 
sky ; the reflections in the water were more beautiful 
than the sky itself; purple waves brighter than precious 
stones forever melting away upon the sands." 



SOME MEMORIAL NOOKS. 85 



CHAPTER VII. 

SOME MEMORIAL NOOKS. 

IT may not be inopportune to mention, in this place, 
a few of the spots in the neighborhood of this, their 
early home, with which the memory of Miss Words- 
worth is more especially associated. By Wordsworth 
himself, indeed, the whole of the Lake district of Eng- 
land has been immortalized, and is more associated 
with his name and life than is the country of the Tros- 
sachs with that of Sir Walter Scott. In illustration of 
this it is only necessary to refer to his poems on the 
naming of places and inscriptions. This fact alone, no 
less than the exalted teaching and beauty of many of 
his works, will serve to preserve the memory of Words- 
worth ; and probably thousands, to whom he would 
otherwise be only a name, will become acquainted 
with him as a loved and trusted teacher. If the spirits 
of the departed ever return and hover over the scenes 
of earth which were loved and hallowed in the old- 
world life, it needs no force of the imagination to 
fancy that of this most spiritual of women, lingering 
by sunny noon or shady evening near the haunts, where, 
with her kindred companion, she walked in happy con- 
verse. Among such favored nooks probably the next 
in interest to their loved " garden-orchard " would be 



86 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

found the beauteous vale of Easedale. Here is a ter- 
race walk in Lancrigg wood which Wordsworth many- 
years after said he and his sister discovered three days 
after they took up their abode at Grasmere, and which 
long remained their favorite haunt. The late Lady 
Richardson, in an article in " Sharpe's London Maga- 
zine," referring at a later period to this place, says : 
" It was their custom to spend the fine days of summer 
in the open air, chiefly in the valley of Easedale. The 
' Prelude ' was chiefly composed in a green mountain 
terrace, on the Easedale side of Helm Crag, known by 
the name of Under Lancrigg, a place which he used to 
say he knew by heart. The ladies sat at their work on 
the hill-side, while he walked to and fro, on the smooth 
green mountain turf, humming out his verses to him- 
self, and then repeating them to his sympathizing and 
ready scribes, to be noted down on the spot and tran- 
scribed at home." 

The winding path leading up to the tarn on the west 
of Easedale brook, on the other side of the valley, is, 
perhaps, still more closely identified with Miss Words- 
worth. The first of his " Poems on the Naming of 
Places " was, he has stated, suggested on the banks 
of the brook that runs through Easedale, by the side 
of which he had composed thousands of verses. The 
poem is as follows : — 

" It was an April morning : fresh and clear 
The Rivulet, delighting in its strength, 
Ran with a young man's speed ; and yet the voice 
Of waters which the winter had supplied 
Was softened down into a vernal tone. 



SOME MEMORIAL NOOKS. 8? 

The spirit of enjoyment and desire, 

And hopes and wishes, from all living things 

Went circling, like a multitude of sounds. 

The budding groves seemed eager to urge on 

The steps of June ; as if their various hues 

Were only hindrances that stood between 

Them and their object: but, meanwhile, prevailed 

Such an entire contentment in the air 

That every naked ash, and tardy tree 

Yet leafless, showed as if the countenance 

With which it looked on this delightful day 

Were native to the summer. — Up the brook 

I roamed in the confusion of my heart, 

Alive to all things, and forgetting all. 

At length I to a sudden turning came 

In this continuous glen, where down a rock 

The Stream, so ardent in its course before, 

Sent forth such sallies of glad sound that all 

Which I till then had heard appeared the voice 

Of common pleasure • beast and bird, the lamb, 

The shepherd's dog, the linnet and the thrush 

Vied with this waterfall, and made a song 

Which, while I listened, seemed like the wild growth 

Or like some natural produce of the air, 

That could not cease to be. Green leaves were here; 

But 'twas the foliage of the rocks — the birch, 

The yew, the holly, and the bright green thorn, 

With hanging islands of resplendent furze : 

And, on a summit, distant a short space, 

By any who should look beyond the dell, 

A single mountain-cottage might be seen. 

I gazed and gazed, and to myself I said, 

1 Our thoughts at least are ours ; and this wild nook, 

My Emma, I will dedicate to thee.' 

— Soon did the spot become my other home, 

My dwelling, and my out-of-doors abode. 

And, of the shepherds who have seen me there, 



88 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

To whom I sometimes in our idle talk 
Have told this fancy, two or three, perhaps, 
Years after we are gone and in our graves, 
When they have cause to speak of this wild place, 
May call it by the name of Emma's Dell." 

It is hardly necessary to mention that Miss Words- 
worth is more than once in the poems referred to as 
the poet's sister " Emma " or " Emmeline." It is, 
perhaps, rather difficult to determine on what precise 
spot they stood when this poem was composed, and 
to which the name of " Emma's Dell " was given. 
Professor Knight, in his very interesting work, " The 
English Lake District, as interpreted by Wordsworth," 
concludes that the place is where the brook takes a 
"sudden turning " a few hundred yards above Goody 
Bridge ; but there are other spots in the brook a little 
further up the valley to which the description in the 
poem is probably equally applicable. 

Another poem of the same series may appropriately 
here find a place, containing, as it does, a loving allu- 
sion to Dorothy. This time it is Miss Wordsworth 
herself who gives the name of William 's Peak to the 
rugged summit of Stone Arthur, situated between 
Green Head Ghyil (the scene of Wordsworth's pas- 
toral poem "Michael") and Tongue Ghyll, a short 
distance on the right-hand side of the road leading 
from Grasmere to Keswick : — 

" There is an Eminence, — of these our hills 
The last that parleys with the setting sun; 
We can behold it from our orchard-seat ; 
And, when at evening we pursue our walk 



SOME MEMORIAL NOOKS. 89 

Along the public way, this Peak, so high 

Above us, and so distant in its height, 

Is visible ; and often seems to send 

Its own deep quiet to restore our hearts. 

The meteors make of it a favorite haunt: 

The star of Jove, so beautiful and large, 

In the mid heavens, is never half so fair 

As when he shines above it. 'Tis in truth 

The loneliest place we have among the clouds. 

And She who dzvells with me, whom I have loved 

With such communion, that no place on earth 

Can ever be a soliticde to me, 

Hath to this lonely Summit given my Name." 

x\s this poem was written in the first year of their 
residence at Grasmere, the reference in the closing 
lines can be to no other person than Miss Wordsworth. 

Still another poem of the series owes its origin to a 
walk by the poet, in the company of his sister and 
Coleridge. The path here referred to, by the side of 
the lake, has, we are informed, lost its privacy and 
beauty, by reason of the making of the new highway 
from Rydal to Grasmere : — 

" A narrow girdle of rough stones and crags, 
A rude and natural causeway, interposed 
Between the water and a winding slope 
Of copse and thicket, leaves the eastern shore 
Of Grasmere safe in its own privacy : 
And there, myself and two beloved Friends, 
One calm September morning, ere the mist 
Had altogether yielded to the sun, 
Sauntered on this retired and difficult way. 

— " 111 suits the road with one in haste ; but we 

Played with our time ; and, as we strolled along, 
It was our occupation to observe 



90 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

Such objects as the waves had tossed ashore — 

Feather, or leaf, or weed, or withered bough, 

Each on the other heaped, along the line 

Of the dry wreck. And, in our vacant mood, 

Not seldom did we stop to watch some tuft 

Of dandelion seed or thistle's beard, 

That skimmed the surface of the dead calm lake, 

Suddenly halting now — a lifeless stand ! 

And starting off again with freak as sudden ; 

In all its sportive wanderings, all the while 

Making report of an invisible breeze 

That was its wings, its chariot, and its horse, 

Its playmate, rather say, its moving soul. 

" And often, trifling with a privilege 
Alike indulged to all, we paused, one now, 
And now the other, to point out, perchance 
To pluck, some flower or water-weed, too fair 
Either to be divided from the place 
On which it grew, or to be left alone 
To its own beauty." 

The poem goes on to relate how they saw in the 
distance, angling by the margin of the lake, a man in 
the garb of a peasant, while from the fields the merry 
noise of the reapers fell upon their ears. They some- 
what hastily came to the conclusion that the man was 
an idler, who, instead of spending his time at the 
gentle craft, might have been more profitably engaged 
in the harvest. Upon a near approach they, however, 
found that he was a feeble old man, wasted by sick- 
ness, and too week to labor, who was doing his best 
to gain a scanty pittance from the lake. It concludes 
by alluding to the self-upbraiding of the three friends, 
in consequence of their too rashly formed opinion : — 



SOME MEMORIAL NOOKS. 9 1 

" I will not say 
What thoughts immediately were ours, nor how 
The happy idleness of that sweet morn, 
With all its lovely images, was changed 
To serious musing and to self-reproach. 
Nor did we fail to see within ourselves 
What need there is to be reserved in speech, 
And temper all our thoughts with charity. 
— Therefore, unwilling to forget that day, 
My Friend, Myself, and She who then received 
The same admonishment, have called the place 
By a memorial name, uncouth indeed, 
As e'er by mariner was given to bay 
Or foreland, on a new-discovered coast ; 
And Point Rash-yudgment is the name it bears." 

Another memorial of Miss Wordsworth in her prime 
is to be found in the " Rock of Names," which stands 
on the right-hand side of the road from Grasmere to 
Keswick, near the head of Thirlmere, and about a 
mile beyond " Wytheburn's modest House of Prayer." 
This was a meeting-place of Wordsworth and Cole- 
ridge, who was then resident at Keswick, and their 
friends. On the surface of this " upright mural block 
of stone," moss-crowned, smooth-faced, and lichen- 
patched, are cut the following letters : -r- 

W. W. 
M. H. 
D. W. 
S. T. C. 
J. W. 
S. H. 



92 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

It is hardly necessary to state that the initials are 
those of William Wordsworth, Mary Hutchinson (after- 
wards his wife), Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor 
Coleridge, John Wordsworth (the poet's brother), and 
Sarah Hutchinson (the sister of Mrs. Wordsworth). 
It is greatly to be regretted that on the completion of 
the projected reservoir of the Manchester Corporation, 
this rock, unless steps are taken for its preservation, 
will be submerged in its waters. Seldom did half-a- 
dozen more poetic and fervent natures meet and leave 
a more unique, and attractive memorial. It is to be 
hoped that means will be adopted not only to have 
the rock removed to a place of safety, but also to 
preserve it from further mutilation. Although these 
initials have withstood the storms and blasts of more 
than four score winters, they are yet perfectly distinct 
and legible, and their original character is preserved. 
Whilst there are, unfortunately, now other initials and 
marks upon the face of the rock, it is more free from 
them than might have been expected. The very 
fact of attention being called to such an interesting 
memento, while being a source of pleasure to the 
admirers of the gifted children of genius who made 
this their trysting-place, also arouses the puerile am- 
bition of those whose interest centres in themselves, 
and to whom no associations are dear, to inscribe 
their own scratch. In this way there has already been 
added the letter J. before the original D. W. of Miss 
Wordsworth. Wordsworth's allusion to this rock, in 
a note to some editions of his poem, " The Wag- 
goner," is as follows : — 



SOME MEMORIAL NOOKS. 93 

ROCK OF NAMES! 
"Light is the strain, but not unjust 
To Thee, and thy memorial-trust 
That once seemed only to express 
Love that was love in idleness ; 
Tokens, as year hath followed year, 
How changed, alas, in character ! 
For they were graven on thy smooth breast 
By hands of those my soul loved best ; 
Meek women, men as true and brave 
As ever went to a hopeful grave : 
Their hands and mine, when side by side, 
With kindred zeal and mutual pride, 
We worked until the Initials took 
Shapes that defied a scornful look. — 
Long as for us a genial feeling 
Survives, or one in need of healing, 
The power, dear Rock, around thee cast, 
Thy monumental power, shall last 
For me and mine ! O thought of pain, 
That would impair it or profane ! 

And fail not Thou, loved Rock ! to keep 
Thy charge when we are laid asleep." 

In this place a reference by Wordsworth to his little 
poem, commencing " Yes, it was the mountain echo," 
will be of interest. " The echo came from Nab-scar, 
when I was walking on the opposite side of Rydal 
Mere. I will here mention, for my dear sister's sake, 
that while she was sitting alone one day, high up on 
this part of Loughrigg fell, she was so affected by the 
voice of the cuckoo, heard from the crags at some 
distance, that she could not suppress a wish to have 
a stone inscribed with her name among the rocks from 
which the sound proceeded." 



94 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE CIRCLE WIDENED. — MRS. WORDSWORTH. 

THE year 1802 was a memorable one to Miss 
Wordsworth no less than to her brother. With 
interests so inseparable, the happiness of one was that 
of the other. After the somewhat agitated period of 
his early life, when he was for a time in danger of ship- 
wreck, and his noble-hearted sister came to his rescue 
and helped to steer his course into the placid waters 
of content and well-grounded hope, Wordsworth was 
in all respects remarkably fortunate, and his life more 
than usually serene and happy. Next to the blessing 
which he possessed in his sister, Wordsworth was 
largely indebted to his admirable wife. In October 
of this year he had the good fortune to marry his 
cousin, Mary Hutchinson, of Penrith — a lady whom 
it would be almost presumption to " even dare to 
praise." As his early friend (and they had in child- 
hood attended the same dame's school together) they 
had strong sympathies in common, with, at the same 
time, much of that contrast of temperament which, 
in married life, renders one the complement of the 
other, and contributes not a little to the completion 
and unity of the dual life. The marriage of those 



THE CIRCLE WIDENED. 95 

whom " friendship has early paired " can hardly be 
otherwise than serenely happy; beginning their life, 
as they thus do, each with the same store of early 
memories, they have a common history into which to 
ingraft their new experiences and hopes. Speaking 
of his marriage, the poet's nephew says : " It was full 
of blessings to himself, as ministering to the exercise of 
his tender affections, in the discipline and delight which 
married life supplies. The boon bestowed upon him 
in the marriage union was admirably adapted to shed 
a cheering and soothing influence upon his mind." 
In a poem, entitled " A Farewell," Wordsworth has 
thus expressed the thoughts with which he left his 
cottage with his sister to bring home the bride and 
friend : — 

" Farewell, thou little Nook of mountain-ground, 
Thou rocky corner in the lowest stair 
Of that magnificent temple which doth bound 
One side of our whole vale with grandeur rare; 
Sweet garden-orchard, eminently fair, 
The loveliest spot that man hath ever found, 
Farewell ! — we leave thee to Heaven's peaceful care, 
Thee, and the Cottage which thou dost surround. 

Fields, goods, and far-off chattels we have none : 
These narrow bounds contain our private store 
Of things earth makes, and sun doth shine upon ; 
Here are they in our sight — we have no more. 

Sunshine and shower be with you, bud and bell ! 
For two months now in vain we shall be sought; 
We leave you here in solitude to dwell 
With these our latest gifts of tender thought; 



g6 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

Thou, like the morning, in thy saffron coat, 
Bright gowan, and marsh-marigold, farewell ! 
Whom from the borders of the Lake we brought, 
And placed together near our rocky Well. 

" We go for One to whom ye will be dear ; 
And she will prize this Bower, this Indian shed, 
Our own contrivance, Building without peer ! 
— A gentle Maid, whose heart is lowly bred, 
Whose pleasures are in wild fields gathered, 
With joyousness, and with a thoughtful cheer, 
Will come to you — to you herself will wed — 
And love the blessed life that we lead here. 

"Dear Spot! which we have watched with tender heed, 
Bringing thee chosen plants and blossoms blown 
Among the distant mountains, flower and weed, 
Which thou hast taken to thee as thy own, 
Making all kindness registered and known ; 
Thou for our sakes, though Nature's child indeed, 
Fair in thyself and beautiful alone, 
Hast taken gifts which thou dost little need. 



" Help us to tell Her tales of years gone by, 
And this sweet spring, the best beloved and best ; 
Joy will be flown in its mortality ; 
Something must stay to tell us of the rest. 
Here, thronged with primroses, the steep rock's breast 
Glittered at evening like a starry sky; 
And in this bush our sparrow built her nest, 
Of which I sang one song that will not die. 

" Oh happy Garden ! whose seclusion deep 
Hath been so friendly to industrious hours ; 
And to soft slumbers, that did gently steep 
Our spirits, carrying with them dreams of flowers, 



THE CIRCLE WIDENED. g? 

And wild notes warbled among leafy bowers; 
Two burning months let summer overleap, 
And, coming back with Her who will be ours, 
Into thy bosom we again shall creep." 

I cannot refrain from also quoting here the exquisite 
picture of Mrs. Wordsworth, written after the experi- 
ence of two years of married life. 

" She was a Phantom of delight 
When first she gleamed upon my sight j 
A lovely Apparition, sent 
To be a moment's ornament : 
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair, 
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair ; 
But all things else about her drawn 
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn ; 
A dancing Shape, an Image gay, 
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay. 

" I saw her upon nearer view, 
A Spirit, yet a Woman too ! 
Her household motions light and free, 
And steps of virgin-liberty ; 
A countenance in which did meet 
Sweet records, promises as sweet ; 
A Creature not too bright or good 
For human nature's daily food ; 
For transient sorrows, simple wiles, 
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles* 

u And now I see with eye serene 
The very pulse of the machine ; 
A Being breathing thoughtful breath, 
A traveller between life and death ; 
The reason firm, the temperate will, 
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill ; 



98 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

A perfect Woman, nobly planned, 
To warn, to comfort, and command ; 
And yet a Spirit still, and bright 
With something of angelic light." 

Without the exultant spirits or rare mental endow- 
ment of Miss Wordsworth, the poet's wife was emi- 
nently fitted for his companionship, one which lasted 
during the fifty following years. Mr. Lockhart speaks 
of her as having one of the most benignant tempers 
that ever diffused peace and cheerfulness through a 
home. Although not written till some years after, 
perhaps the present is the most fitting place in which 
to quote De Quincey's description of Mrs. Words- 
worth : l 

" I saw sufficiently to be aware of two ladies just 
entering the room, through a doorway opening upon a 
little staircase. The foremost, a tallish young woman, 
with the most winning expression of benignity upon 
her features, advanced to me, presenting her hand with 
so frank an air, that all embarrassment must have fled 
in a moment before the native goodness of her man- 
ner. This was Mrs. Wordsworth, cousin of the poet, 
and, for the last five years or more, his wife. She was 
now mother of two children, a son and a daughter ; 
and she furnished a remarkable proof how possible it 
is for a woman, neither handsome nor even comely, 
according to the rigor of criticism — nay, generally 

1 For the copious description here given of Mrs. Wordsworth, and that, 
on a subsequent page, of Miss Wordsworth, I am indebted to the contribu- 
tions of De Quincey to " Tait's Edinburgh Magazine," which afterwards 
formed part of his collected works. 



THE CIRCLE WIDENED. 99 

pronounced very plain — to exercise all the practical 
fascination of beauty, through the mere compensatory 
charms of sweetness all but angelic, of simplicity the 
most entire, womanly self-respect and purity of heart 
speaking through all her looks, acts, and movements. 
Words, I was going to have added ; but her words 
were few. In reality, she talked so little, that Mr. 
Slave-Trade Clarkson used to allege against her, that 
she could only say, ' God bless you > ' Certainly, her 
intellect was not of an active order ; but, in a quies- 
cent, reposing, meditative way, she appeared always 
to have a genial enjoyment from her own thoughts ; 
and it would have been strange, indeed, if she, who 
enjoyed such eminent advantages of training, from the 
daily society of her husband and his sister, failed to 
acquire some power of judging for herself, and putting 
forth some functions of activity. But, undoubtedly, 
that was not her element : to feel and to enjoy in a 
luxurious repose of mind — there was her forte and 
her peculiar privilege ; and how much better this 
was adapted to her husband's taste, how much more 
adapted to uphold the comfort of his daily life, than 
a blue-stocking loquacity, or even a legitimate talent 
for discussion, may be inferred from his verses, be- 
ginning— 

' She was a Phantom of delight, 
When first she gleamed upon my sight.' 

... I will add to this abstract of her moral portrait, 
these few concluding traits of her appearance in a 
physical sense. Her figure was tolerably good. In 



IOO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

complexion she was fair, and there was something 
peculiarly pleasing even in this accident of the skin, 
for it was accompanied by an animated expression of 
health, a blessing which, in fact, she possessed unin- 
terruptedly. Her eyes, the reader may already know, 

were 

' Like stars of Twilight fair, 
Like Twilight, too, her dark brown hair, 
But all things else about her drawn 
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn.' 

Yet strange it is to tell that, in these eyes of vesper 
gentleness, there was a considerable obliquity of vision ; 
and much beyond that slight obliquity which is often 
supposed to be an attractive foible in the countenance : 
this ought to have been displeasing or repulsive ; yet, 
in fact, it was not. Indeed all faults, had they been 
ten times more and greater, would have been neu- 
tralized by that supreme expression of her features, to 
the unity of which every lineament in the fixed parts, 
and every undulation in the moving parts of her coun- 
tenance, concurred, viz., a sunny benignity — a radiant 
graciousness — such as in this world I never saw sur- 
passed." 

It will be observed that De Quincey here speaks 
rather slightingly of Mrs. Wordsworth's intellect, almost 
in such a way as suggests a desire to " damn with faint 
praise." Notwithstanding the unique charm of his 
style and power of language, of which his extensive 
learning and reading had made him such a master, his 
pen, even when portraying his most cherished friends, 
seems to be slightly touched with an envious venom. 



THE CIRCLE WIDENED. 10 1 

That Mrs. Wordsworth's intellect was of no mean order 
there are in her life abundant traces. The dignified 
repose and simplicity of her manner, doubtless, formed 
a striking contrast to that of the impassioned and 
ardent Dorothy. But it could hardly be other than 
a lofty intellect that added two of the most exquisite 
and thoughtful lines to one of the poet's most charm- 
ing of pieces. Who, having once read, does not re- 
member the lines on the daffodils ? — 

" I wandered lonely as a cloud 
That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 
When all at once I saw a crowd, 
A host, of golden daffodils ; 
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 

" Continuous as the stars that shine 
And twinkle on the milky way, 
They stretched in never-ending line 
Along the margin of a bay ; 
Ten thousand saw I at a glance, 
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 

" The waves beside them danced ; but they 
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee : 
A poet could not but be gay, 
In such a jocund company: 
I gazed, and gazed, but little thought 
What wealth the show to me had brought ; 

" For oft, when on my couch I lie 
In vacant or in pensive mood, 
They flash upon that inward eye 
Which is the bliss of solitude ; 
And then my heart with pleasure fills, 
And dances with the daffodils." 



102 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

The lines in italics, suggested by Mrs. Wordsworth, 
here form the kernel of truth, the central gem around 
which the lesser beauties are clustered. 

What a true "inmate of the heart" the poet's wife 
was, and continued to be, to him, we well know. 
Among other tributes to her soothing and sustaining 
aid might be mentioned the dedication to her of the 
"White Doe of Rylstone," and many other pieces. 
Happy is the man who, after twenty years of married 
companionship, can thus write of his wife : — 

" Oh, dearer far than light and life are dear, 
Full oft our human foresight I deplore ; 
Trembling, through my unworthiness, with fear 
That friends, by death disjoined, may meet no more ! 

" Misgivings, hard to vanquish or control, 
Mix with the day, and cross the hour of rest ; 
While all the future, for thy purer soul, 
"With ' sober certainties ' of love is blest. 

" That sigh of thine, not meant for human ear, 
Tells that these words thy humbleness offend ; 
Yet bear me up — else faltering in the rear 
Of a steep march ; support me to the end. 

" Peace settles where the intellect is meek, 
And Love is dutiful in thought and deed ; 
Through Thee Communion with that Love I seek : 
The faith Heaven strengthens where He moulds the Creed." 

And when many following years had passed over 
them, and they had together grown old, their love and 
devotion, which had increased with their years, retained 



THE CIRCLE WIDENED. 103 

that freshness and fervor of youth which enables aged 
hearts to rejoice in all things young and beautiful ; — 

" Morn into noon did pass, noon into eve, 
And the old day was welcome as the young, 
As welcome, and as beautiful — in sooth 
More beautiful, as being a thing more holy: 
Thanks to thy virtues, to the eternal youth 
Of all thy goodness, never melancholy ; 
To thy large heart and humble mind, that cast 
Into one vision, future, present, past." 

The marriage of the poet only introduced into the 
circle another kindred spirit, and did not to any extent 
deprive him of the society of his sister, who, as before, 
continued to reside with him, finding a genial com- 
panion in one who had long been a cherished friend. 
Shall we not then say that Wordsworth was in his com- 
panionships at this period happy in a degree to which 
most of his brother bards have been strangers ? With 
these two high-souled and appreciative women to 
encircle him with their love and minister to him, to 
stimulate to lofty thought and high endeavor, what 
wonder that his life and work attained a fulness and 
completion seldom reached? 



On Reading Miss Wordsworth' 's Recollections of a Journey in 
Scotland, in 1803, with her Brother and Coleridge. 

"I close the book, I shut my eyes, 
I see the Three before me rise, — 
Loving sister, famous brother, 
Each one mirrored in the other ; 
Brooding William, artless Dora, 
Who was to her very core a 
Lover of dear Nature's face, 
In its perfect loveliness, — 
Lover of her glens and flowers, 
Of her sunlit clouds and showers, 
Of her hills and of her streams, 
Of her moonlight — when she dreams ; 
Of her tears and of her smiles, 
Of her quaint delicious wiles ; 
Telling what best pleasures lie 
In the loving, unspoiled eye, 
In the reverential heart, 
That in great Nature sees God's art. 

" And him — the man ' of large discourse,' 
Of pregnant thought, of critic force, 
That gray-eyed sage, who was not wise 
In wisdom that in doing lies, 
But who had ' thoughts that wander through 
Eternity,' — the old and new. 
Who, when he rises on our sight, 
Spite of his failings, shines all bright, 
With something of an angel-light. 

" We close the book with thankful heart, 
Father of Lights, to Thee, who art 
Of every good and perfect gift 
The Giver, — unto Thee we lift 
Our souls in prayer, that all may see 
Thy hand, Thy heart, in all they see." 

Anon, in The Spectator. 
105 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND, \OJ 



CHAPTER IX. 

TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 

IT was in the months of August and September, in 
the year following that of his marriage, that 
Wordsworth and his sister made their memorable six 
weeks' tour in Scotland. The character of this tour, 
as well as the remarkable memorial of it given to the 
world after a lapse of seventy years, render it, in this 
place, deserving of more than a mere passing notice. 
Of the daily incidents of this journey, and the im- 
pressions and reflections caused by it, Miss Words- 
worth kept a minute journal. Although not intended 
as a literary production, and written only for the peru- 
sal and information of friends, the style is not only 
pleasing but elegant ; and it is a matter for congratu- 
lation that the family of the writer at length consented 
to its publication. This was done in 1874, under the 
able editorship of Principal Shairp, of St. Andrews, 
and the work rapidly passed through several editions. 
Not only is it of much value to those taking an interest 
in the lives of the poet and his sister ; but, containing 
as it does descriptions at once graceful and graphic of 
the scenes through which they passed, it cannot fail to 
afford pleasure to the general reader. The Editor, in 



108 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

his preface, says of it, that he does not remember any 
other book " more capable of training heart and eye 
to look with profit on the face of Nature, as it mani- 
fests itself in our northern land." 

Mrs. Wordsworth was not of the party, being 
detained at home by maternal duties. For the first 
fortnight the Wordsworths were accompanied by Cole- 
ridge, who does not, however, on this occasion, seem 
to have been the desirable companion of old. Words- 
worth has said of him that he was at the time " in bad 
spirits, and somewhat too much in love with his own 
dejection." 

The manner of their travelling was altogether in 
keeping with the humble character of their lives. The 
Irish car, and the ancient steed — which, from his vari- 
ous wayward freaks, and the difficulty with which he 
was on certain occasions managed by the poets, must 
have been somewhat of a screw — were not calculated 
to afford much luxury or ease. But the object of the 
tourists was not to make a fashionable holiday. The 
very love of Nature drew them to her wildest solitudes, 
and to woo her in her varied moods, as well when 
frowning and repellant as when smiling and inviting. 
As they were harvesting for future memories the deep 
experiences and lingering harmonies which are reaped 
and garnered by a loving companionship with Nature, 
it mattered little to them that these were frequently 
obtained at the cost of weariness and discomfort. 

It need not be repeated that for the in-gathering of 
Nature's most beneficent gifts the poet could not have 
had a more fitting companion than his sister. Not 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 109 

only did she idolize him from the depth of the warm 
and tender heart of young womanhood, but she was 
possessed of a mind singularly sympathetic with his 
own, and with a kindred enthusiasm as to the objects 
in view. Her splendid health, also, at this time, and 
strength of limb, made her such a comrade that this 
tour became to them an enduring joy, to be remem- 
bered for all life : She was 

" Fleet and strong — 
And down the rocks could leap along 
Like rivulets in May." 

In giving a short account of this tour, it will be per- 
missible to take the liberty of a reviewer of quoting a 
few extracts. What strikes a reader the most in Miss 
Wordsworth's record is her quickness of observation. 
Nothing seemed to escape her notice. It was not only 
the general aspect of Nature in both storm and sun- 
shine, and the diversity of scenes, that spoke to them ; 
but Miss Wordsworth's eye took in objects the most 
minute, she was alive to those subtle influences, which 
serve so much to impart an interest to any journey or 
circumstance it would not otherwise possess. She 
took with her her warm loving heart, so full, for all 
with whom she came into contact, of the milk of 
human kindness — grateful for little attentions given 
or favors bestowed, and touched by those traits of 
humanity which make the whole world kin. There is 
the constant loving remembrance of small events, to 
which association sometimes lends such a charm. It 
was a very simple thing for Miss Wordsworth, writing 



IIO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH, 

to her sister-in-law at Grasmere, at an inn by no means 
remarkable for comfort, to mention that she wrote on 
the same window-ledge on which her brother had 
written to her two years before ; but it reveals a loving 
heart. 

On the second day of their journey we find the 
following entry in Miss Wordsworth's diary : " Passed 
Rose Castle upon the Caldew, an ancient building of 
red stone with sloping gardens, an ivied gateway, vel- 
vet lawns, old garden walls, trim flower-borders, with 
stately and luxuriant flowers. We walked up to the 
house and stood some minutes watching the swallows 
that flew about restlessly, and flung their shadows upon 
the sunbright walls of the old building ; the shadows 
glanced and twinkled, interchanged and crossed each 
other, expanded and shrunk up, appeared and disap- 
peared every instant ; as I observed to William and 
Coleridge, seeming more like living things than the 
birds themselves." 

Going by way of Carlisle, the small party entered 
Scotland near Gretna, and proceeded by Dumfries and 
the Vale of Nith. At Dumfries, the grave and house 
of Burns had a melancholy interest for them, Miss 
Wordsworth stating that "there is no thought surviving 
in Burns's daily life that is not heart depressing." 

On leaving the Nith, Miss Wordsworth thus de- 
scribes the scenery : " We now felt indeed that we 
were in Scotland ; there was a natural peculiarity in 
this place. In the scenes of the Nith it had not been 
the same as England, but yet not simple, naked Scot- 
land. The road led us down the hill, and now there 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. Ill 

was no room in the vale but for the river and the road ; 
we had sometimes the stream to the right, sometimes 
to the left. The hills were pastoral, but we did not 
see many sheep ; green smooth turf on the left, no 
ferns. On the right the heath plant grew in abun- 
dance, of the most exquisite color ; it covered a whole 
hill-side, or it was in streams and patches. We trav- 
elled along the vale, without appearing to ascend, for 
some miles ; all the reaches were beautiful, in exquisite 
proportion, the hills seeming very high from being so 
near to us. It might have seemed a valley which 
Nature had kept to herself for pensive thoughts and 
tender feelings, but that we were reminded at every 
turn of the road of something beyond by the coal- 
carts which were travelling towards us. Though these 
carts broke in upon the tranquillity of the glen, they 
added much to the picturesque effect of the different 
views, which indeed wanted nothing, though perfectly 
bare, houseless, and treeless. 

" After some time our road took us upwards towards 
the end of the valley. Now the steeps were heathy all 
around. Just as we began to climb the hill we saw 
three boys who came down the cleft of a brow on our 
left ; one carried a fishing-rod, and the hats of all were 
braided with honeysuckles ; they ran after one another 
as wanton as the wind. I cannot express what a char- 
acter of beauty those few honeysuckles in the hats of 
the three boys gave to the place ; what bower could 
they have come from ? We walked up the hill, met 
two well-dressed travellers, the woman barefoot. Our 
little lads, before they had gone far, were joined by 



112 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

some half-dozen of their companions, all without shoes 
and stockings. They told us they lived at Wanlock- 
head, the village above, pointing to the top of the hill ; 
they went to school and learned Latin, Virgil, and 
some of them Greek, Homer; but when Coleridge 
began to inquire further, off they ran, poor things ! I 
suppose afraid of being examined." 

The following anecdote is related of Coleridge, when 
at the falls of Cora Linn : " We sat upon a bench, 
placed for the sake of one of the views, whence we 
looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open 
country, and saw a ruined tower, called Wallace's 
Tower, which stands at a very little distance from the 
fall, and is an interesting object. A lady and gentle- 
man, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came 
to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found 
them again at another station above the Falls. Cole- 
ridge, who is always good natured enough to enter into 
conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, 
began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it 
was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with 
the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been 
settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the 
words grand, majestic, sublime, &c, and had discussed 
the subject at some length with William the day be- 
fore. ' Yes, sir,' says Coleridge, ' it is a majestic 
waterfall.' ' Sublime and beautiful,' replied his friend. 
Poor Coleridge could make no answer, and, not very 
desirous to continue the conversation, came to us and 
related the story, laughing heartily." 

Of the falls of the Clyde, Miss Wordsworth observes : 



TO UR IN SCO TLAND. 1 1 3 

" We had been told that the Cartland Crags were bet- 
ter worth going to see than the falls of the Clyde. I 
do not think so ; but I have seen rocky dells resem- 
bling these before, with clear water instead of that 
muddy stream, and never saw any thing like the falls 
of the Clyde. It would be a delicious spot to have 
near one's house ; one would linger out many a day in 
the cool shadow of the caverns, and the stream would 
soothe one by its murmuring ; still, being an old friend, 
one would not love it the less for its homely face. 
Even we, as we passed along, could not help stopping 
for a long while to admire the beauty of the lazy foam, 
forever in motion, and never moved away, in a still 
place of the water, covering the whole surface of it 
with streaks and lines and ever- varying circles." 

The Highlands were entered at Loch Lomond, of 
which Miss Wordsworth writes : — " On a splendid 
evening, with the light of the sun diffused over the 
whole islands, distant hills, and the broad expanse of 
the lake, with its creeks, bays, and little slips of water 
among the islands, it must be a glorious sight." . . . 
" We had not climbed far before we were stopped by 
a sudden burst of prospect, so singular and beautiful, 
that it was like a flash of images from another world. 
We stood with our backs to the hill of the island, which 
we were ascending, and which shut out Ben Lomond 
entirely, and all the upper part of the lake, and we 
looked towards the foot of the lake, scattered over 
with islands without beginning and without end. The 
sun shone, and the distant hills were visible, some 
through sunny mists, others in gloom with patches of 



114 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

sunshine ; the lake was lost under the low and distant 
hills, and the islands lost in the lake, which was all in 
motion with travelling fields of light, or dark shadows 
under rainy clouds. There are many hills, but no 
commanding eminence at a distance to confine the 
prospect, so that the land seemed endless as the 
water." 

In her description of their adventures at Loch Kat- 
rine and the Trossachs, Miss Wordsworth is very happy. 
Writing of the view from one point she says : — " We 
saw Benvenue opposite to us — a high mountain, but 
clouds concealed its top ; its side, rising directly from 
the lake, is covered with birch trees to a great height, 
and seamed with innumerable channels of torrents ; 
but now there was no water in them, nothing to break 
in upon the stillness and repose of the scene ; nor do I 
recollect hearing the sound of water from any side, the 
wind being fallen and the lake perfectly still ; the place 
was all eye, and completely satisfied the sense and 
heart. Above and below us, to the right and to the 
left, were rocks, knolls, and hills, which, wherever any 
thing could grow — and that was everywhere between 
the rocks — were covered with trees and heather ; the 
trees did not in any place grow so thick as an ordinary 
wood ; yet I think there was never a bare space of 
twenty yards, it was more like a natural forest, where 
the trees grow in groups or singly, not hiding the sur- 
face of the ground, which, instead of being green and 
mossy, was of the richest purple. The heather was in- 
deed the most luxuriant I ever saw ; it was so tall that 
a child of ten years old struggling through it would 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 115 

often have been buried head and shoulders, and the 
exquisite beauty of the color, near or at a distance, 
seen under the trees, is not to be conceived. But if 
I were to go on describing forevermore, I should give 
but a faint, and very* often a false idea of the different 
objects and the various combinations of them in this 
most intricate and delicious place ; besides, I tired my- 
self out with describing at Loch Lomond, so I will 
hasten to the end of my tale. This reminds me of a 
sentence in a little pamphlet written by the minister of 
Callander, descriptive of the environs of that place. 
After having taken up at least six closely-printed pages 
with the Trossachs, he concludes thus : — * In a word, 
the Trossachs beggar all description,' a conclusion in 
which everybody who has been there will agree with 
him. I believe the word • Trossachs ' signifies ' many 
hills ' ; it is a name given to all the eminences at the 
foot of Loch Ketterine, and about half a mile beyond." 
As an illustration of the expedients to which they 
were obliged to resort, and the scanty accommoda- 
tion afforded to them, may be quoted the following : — 
" Our companion from the Trossachs, who, it appeared, 
was an Edinburgh drawing-master, going, during a 
vacation, on a pedestrian tour to John o' Groat's house, 
was to sleep in the barn with William and Coleridge, 
where the man said he had plenty of dry hay. I 
do not believe that the hay of the Highlands is often 
very dry ; but this year it had a better chance than 
usual. Wet or dry, however, the next morning they 
said they had slept comfortably. When I went to bed 
the mistress, desiring me to ' go ben,' attended me 



II 6 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

with a candle, and assured me that the bed was dry, 
though not ' sic as I had been used to.' It was of 
chaff; there were two others in the room, a cupboard 
and two chests, on one of which stood the milk in 
wooden vessels, covered over. I should have thought 
that milk so kept could not have been sweet ; but the 
cheese and butter were good. The walls of the whole 
house were of stone unplastered. It consisted of 
three apartments — the cow-house at one end ; the 
kitchen, or house, in the middle ; and the spence at 
the other end. The rooms were divided, not up to 
the rigging, but only to the beginning of the 1 roof, so 
that there was a free passage for light and smoke from 
one end of the house to the other. 

" I went to bed sometime before the family. The 
door was shut between us, and they had a bright fire, 
which I could not see ; but the light it sent up among 
the varnished rafters and beams, which crossed each 
other in almost as intricate and fantastic a manner, as 
I have seen the under-boughs of a large beech-tree, 
withered by the depth of the shade above, produced 
the most beautiful effect that can be conceived. It 
was like what I should suppose an underground cave 
or temple to be, with a dripping or moist roof, and 
the moonlight entering in upon it by some means or 
other and yet the colors were more like melted gems. 
I lay looking up till the light of the fire faded away, 
and the man and his wife and child had crept into 
their bed at the other end of the room. I did not 
sleep much, but passed a comfortable night — for my 
bed, though hard, was warm and clean ; the unusual- 



TO UR IN SCO TLAND. 1 1 J 

ness of my situation prevented me from sleeping. I 
could hear the waves beat against the shore of the 
lake ; a little ' syke ' close to the door made a much 
louder noise ; and when I sat up in my bed I could 
see the lake through an open window-place at the bed's- 
head. Add to this, it rained all night. I was less 
occupied by remembrance of the Trossachs, beautiful 
as they were, than the vision of the Highland hut 
which I could not get out of my head. I thought of 
the Fairyland of Spenser, and what I had read in 
romance at other times, and then what a feast would it 
be for a London pantomime-maker, could he but trans- 
plant it to Drury Lane, with all its beautiful colors ! " 

Extracts from this admirable and fascinating book 
might be multiplied ; but I must resist the temptation. 
It is a book which must be read to be enjoyed. The 
tourists received impressions not only from the natural 
scenery, but also from the simple-minded and hospit- 
able Highlanders, with whom they from time to time 
met. They were so delighted with two Highland 
girls, in their fresh, youthful beauty, whom they met at 
the ferry at Inversneyde, that Wordsworth made them 
the subject of a pleasant poem. Miss Wordsworth, 
after describing her pleasurable meeting with these 
girls, says : — "At this day the innocent merriment of 
the girls, with their kindness to us, and the beautiful 
figure and face of the elder, come to my mind when- 
ever I think of the ferry-house and waterfall of Loch 
Lomond ; and I never think of the two girls but the 
whole image of that romantic spot is before me — a 
living image, as it will be, to my dying day." 



Il8 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

The poem of her brother, which cannot be much 
more poetic than the graceful prose of the sister, is as 
follows : — 

" Sweet Highland Girl, a very shower 
Of beauty is thy earthly dower ! 
Twice seven consenting years have shed 
Their utmost beauty on thy head : 
And these gray rocks ; that household lawn ; 
Those trees, a veil just half withdrawn ; 
This fall of water that doth make 
A murmur near the silent Lake ; 
This little Bay, a quiet road 
That holds in shelter thy abode ; 
In truth, together do ye seem 
Like something fashioned in a dream ; 
Such Forms as from their covert peep 
"When earthly cares are laid asleep ! 
But, O fair Creature ! in the light 
Of common day, so heavenly bright, 
I bless thee, Vision as thou art, 
I bless thee with a human heart : 
God shield thee to thy latest years ! 
Thee neither know I, nor thy peers ; 
And yet my eyes are filled with tears. 

" With earnest feeling I shall pray 
For thee when I am far away : 
For never saw I mien or face, 
In -which more plainly I could trace 
Benignity and home-bred sense 
Ripening in perfect innocence. 
Here, scattered like a random seed, 
Remote from men, Thou dost not need 
Th' embarrass'd look of shy distress, 
And maidenly shamefacedness ; 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. II9 

Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear 
The freedom of a Mountaineer ; 
A face with gladness overspread ! 
Soft smiles, by human kindness bred ! 
And seemliness complete, that sways 
Thy courtesies, about thee plays ; 
With no restraint but such as springs 
From quick and eager visitings 
Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach 
Of thy few words of English speech : 
A bondage sweetly brook'd, a strife 
That gives thy gestures grace and life ! 
So have I, not unmoved in mind, 
Seen birds of tempest-loving kind — 
Thus beating up against the wind. 

" What hand but would a garland cull 
For thee, who art so beautiful ? 
O, happy pleasure ! here to dwell 
Beside thee in some heathy dell ; 
Adopt your homely, ways, and dress, 
A Shepherd, thou a Shepherdess ! 
But I could frame a wish for thee 
More like a grave reality: 
Thou art to me but as a wave 
Of the wild sea : and I would have 
Some claim upon thee if I could, 
Though but of common neighborhood. 
What joy to hear thee, and to see ! 
Thy elder Brother I would be, 
Thy Father — any thing to thee. 

" Now thanks to Heaven ! that of its grace 
Hath led me to this lonely place ! 
Joy have I had ; and going hence 
I bear away my recompense. 
In spots like these it is we prize 
Our Memory, feel that she hath eyes j 



120 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

Then, why should I be loth to stir ? 

I feel this place was made for her ; 

To give new pleasure like the past, 

Continued long as life shall last. 

Nor am I loth, though pleased at heart, 

Sweet Highland Girl, from thee to part ; 

For I, methinks, till I grow old, 

As fair before me shall behold, 

As I do now, the Cabin small, 

The Lake, the Bay, the Waterfall, 

And Thee, the Spirit of them all." 

In a somewhat primitive way, and having to contend 
with bad roads, accidents to their car, and sometimes 
hard lodging and scanty fare, they managed to traverse 
a great part of the country which has since become so 
familiar to tourists, taking on their way Inverary, Glen 
Coe, Loch Tay, the Pass of Killicrankie, Dunkeld, Cal- 
lander, back by the Trossachs to Loch Lomond, and 
eventually to Edinburgh. Approaching Loch Lomond 
for the second time, Miss Wordsworth remarks that 
she felt it much more interesting to visit a place where 
they had been before than it could possibly be for the 
first time. By the lake they met two women, without 
hats but neatly dressed, who seemed to have been 
taking their Sunday evening's walk. One of them 
said, in a soft, friendly voice, " What ! you are step- 
ping westward? " She adds : " I cannot describe how 
affecting this simple expression was in that remote 
place, with the western sky in front, yet glowing with 
the departed sun." Wordsworth himself some time 
afterwards, in remembrance of the incident, wrote the 
following poem : — 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 121 

" ' What ! you are stepping westward ? ' ' Yea.* 
— 'Twould be a wildish destiny, 
If we, who thus together roam 
In a strange Land, and far from home, 
Were in this place the guests of Chance ; 
Yet who would stop or fear to advance, 
Though home or shelter he had none, 
With such a sky to lead him on ? 

" The dewy ground was dark and cold, 
Behind all gloomy to behold, 
And stepping westward seem'd to be 
A kind of heavenly destiny ; 
I liked the greeting ; 'twas a sound 
Of something without place or bound ; 
And seemed to give me spiritual right 
To travel through that region bright. 

" The voice was soft ; and she who spake 
Was walking by her native lake ; 
The salutation was to me 
The very sound of courtesy ; 
Its power was felt, and while my eye 
Was fix'd upon the glowing Sky, 
The echo of the voice enwrought 
A human sweetness, with the thought 
Of travelling through the world that lay 
Before me in my endless way." 

With Edinburgh Miss Wordsworth was delighted. 
She says : " It was impossible to think of any thing 
that was little or mean, the goings on of trade, the 
strife of men, or every-day city business ; the impres- 
sion was one, and it was visionary ; like the concep- 
tions of our childhood of Bagdad or Balsora, when we 
have been reading the ' Arabian Nights' Entertain- 
ments.' " 



122 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

Not the least memorable part of their tour was a 
visit to Sir — then Mr. — Walter Scott, who was then 
unknown to fame as a novelist, but who, as Sheriff of 
Selkirk, and considered a very clever and amiable 
man, was universally respected. With him they visited 
Melrose and other places of interest. Miss Words- 
worth writes: "Walked up to Ferniehurst — an old 
hall, in a secluded situation, now inhabited by farmers ; 
the neighboring ground had the wildness of a forest, 
being irregularly scattered over with fine old trees. 
The wind was tossing their branches, and sunshine 
dancing among the leaves, and I happened to exclaim, 
1 What a life there is in trees ! ' on which Mr. Scott 
observed that the words reminded him of a young 
lady who had been born and educated on an island 
of the Orcades, and came to spend a summer at Kelso, 
and in the neighborhood of Edinburgh. She used to 
say that in the new world into which she was come 
nothing had disappointed her so much as trees and 
woods ; she complained that they were lifeless, silent, 
and, compared with the grandeur of the ever-changing 
ocean, even insipid. At first I was surprised, but the 
next moment I felt that the impression was natural. 
Mr. Scott said that she was a very sensible young 
woman, and had read much. She talked with endless 
rapture and feeling of the power and greatness of the 
ocean; and, with the same passionate attachment, 
returned to her native island without any probability 
of quitting it again. The Valley of the Jed is very 
solitary immediately under Ferniehurst ; we walked 
down the river, wading almost up to the knees in fern, 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 1 23 

which in many parts overspread the forest-ground. It 
made me think of our walks at Alfoxden, and of our 
own park — though at Ferniehurst is no park at pres- 
ent — and the slim fawns that we used to startle from 
their couching-places, among the fern at the top of 
the hill." 

The journal contains many short passages which 
might be quoted to show its poetic character. The 
following are selected almost at random : " I can always 
walk over a moor with a light foot ; I seem to be drawn 
more closely to Nature in such places than anywhere 
else ; or, rather, I feel more strongly the power of Nature 
over me, and am better satisfied with myself, for being 
able to find enjoyment in what, unfortunately to many 
persons, is either dismal or insipid." " The opposite 
bank of the river is left in its natural wildness, and 
nothing was to be seen higher up but the deep dell, 
its steep banks being covered with fine trees, a beauti- 
ful relief or contrast to the garden, which is one of the 
most elaborate old things ever seen — a little hanging 
garden of Babylon." Again, she writes : "The great- 
est charm of a brook or river is in the liberty to pursue 
it through its windings ; you can then take it in what- 
ever mood you like — silent or noisy, sportive or quiet. 
The beauties of the brook or river must be sought, and 
the pleasure is in going in search of them ; those of the 
lake or of the sea come to you of themselves." The 
sky was gray and heavy — floating mists on the hill- 
sides, which softened the objects, and where we lost 
sight of the lake it appeared so near to the sky that 
they almost touched one another, giving a visionary 



124 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

beauty to the prospect." From the reflection of the 
crimson clouds the water appeared of a deep red, like 
melted rubies, yet with a mixture of a gray or blackish 
hue ; the gorgeous light of the sky, with the singular 
color of the lake, made the scene exceedingly roman- 
tic ; yet it was more melancholy than cheerful. With 
all the power of light from the clouds there was an 
overcasting of the gloom of evening — a twilight upon 
the hills." 

This tour was rich in its results, not only in the 
sister's journal but also in the poems of the brother, 
to which it gave birth. Alluding to these a contributor 
to Blackwood, so long ago as 1835, says : " Wordsworth 
in Scotland as in England and Switzerland, and Italy 
and the Tyrol, is still Wordsworth. Here, too, he 
reaps : — 

1 The harvests of a quiet eye 
That broods and sleeps on his own heart.' " 

His thoughts, and feelings, and visions, and dreams, 
and fancies, and imaginations, are all his own, by some 
divine right which no other mortal shares along with 
him ; and, true as they all are to nature, are all dis- 
tinguished by some indefinable, but delightful charm 
peculiar to his own being, which assuredly is the most 
purely spiritual that ever was enshrined in human dust. 
Safe in his originality he fears not to travel the same 
ground that has been travelled by thousands — and 
beaten, and barren, and naked as it may seem to be 
— he is sure to detect some loveliest family of wild 
flowers that had lurked unseen in some unsuspected 



TOUR IN SCOTLAND. 12$ 

crevices — to soothe his ears with a transient murmur, 
the spirit of the wilderness awakens — the bee that had 
dropped on the moss as if benumbed by frost — the 
small moorland bird revivified by sunshine, sent from 
heaven for the poet's sake, goes twittering in circles in 
the air above his head, nor is afraid that its nest will be 
trodden by his harmless feet; and should a sudden 
summer shower affront the sunshine, it is that a rainbow 
may come and go for his delight, and leave its tran- 
sitory splendors in some immortal song. On the great 
features of Nature — lochs and mountains, among which 
he has lived his days — he looks with a serene but 
sovereign eye, as if he held them all in fee, and they 
stood there to administer to the delight — we must not 
say the pride — of him, ' Sole king of rocky Cumber- 
land ; ' and true it is that from the assemblage of their 
summits, in the sunset, impulses of deeper mood have 
come to him in solitude than ever visited the heart of 
any other poet. . . . The true Highland spirit is 
there ; but another spirit, too, which Wordsworth car- 
ries with him wherever he goes in the sanctuary of his 
own genius, and which colors all it breathes on — 
lending lovelier light to the fair, and more awful gloom 
to the great, and ensouling what else were but cold 
death." 



126 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 



CHAPTER X. 

LIFE AT GRASMERE. CAPTAIN WORDSWORTH. 

A VISIT paid by Coleridge to Grasmere, shortly 
after the Scottish tour, is thus alluded to in a 
letter written by him to his friend, Mr. Thomas Wedge- 
wood, in January, 1804. He says : — "I left my home 
December 20th, 1803, intending to stay a day and a 
half at Grasmere and then walk to Kendal, whither I 
had sent all my clothes and viatica, from thence to go 
to London, and to see whether or no I could arrange 
my pecuniary matters, so as, leaving Mrs. Coleridge all 
that was necessary to her comforts, to go myself to 
Madeira, having a persuasion strong as the life within 
me, that one winter spent in a really warm, genial cli- 
mate, would completely restore me ... I staid at 
Grasmere (Mr. Wordsworth's) a month ; three-fourths 
of the time bedridden ; and deeply do I feel the en- 
thusiastic kindness of Wordsworth's wife and sister, 
who sat up by me, the one or the other, in order to 
awaken me at the first symptoms of distressful feeling ; 
and even when they went to rest continued often and 
often to weep and watch for me even in their dreams." 
The death of her brother, Captain John Wordsworth, 
in the early part of 1805, was a great sorrow to Miss 



CAPTAIN WORDSWORTH. 1 27 

Wordsworth, as well as to the other members of the 
family. Captain Wordsworth was a younger brother 
of the poet, and a great favorite with him and his sister. 
In consequence of their early orphaned condition, and 
subsequent separation, they had not enjoyed much of 
each other's society until the time of Wordsworth's 
residence at Grasmere. Previously to this, and since 
the two brothers had been at school together at Hawks- 
head, they had only occasionally seen each other. 

After the settlement of Wordsworth and his sister 
at Grasmere, this brother, who was in the service of 
the East India Company, had paid them a prolonged 
visit, extending over eight months. The fraternal ties 
were then renewed and strengthened, cemented as 
they became by mature sympathies. A kinship of 
thought and feeling, added to warm natural affections, 
bound together these three poetic souls in mutual love 
more than usually devoted. Captain Wordsworth rec- 
ognized his brother's genius and greatness of soul, and 
felt assured that the time would arrive when they 
would be widely acknowledged. Writing of him to 
Miss Wordsworth, Coleridge says : — " Your brother 
John is one of you — a man who hath solitary usings 
of his own intellect, deep in feeling, with a subtle 
tact, and swift instinct of true beauty." Himself so 
thoroughly in harmony with his brother's pursuits, and 
an ardent lover of the beautiful in Nature, as well as 
in life, he became, as Wordsworth says, "a silent 
poet," and was known among those of his own craft 
as " The Philosopher." Captain Wordsworth had so 
identified himself in heart with his brother's pursuits, 



128 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

and had become so enamoured of the life led by him 
and their sister in this quiet and beautiful vale, " far 
from the madding crowd's ignoble strife," that he had 
formed the idea, if prospered during a few voyages, 
of settling at Grasmere, and adding his worldly store 
to theirs, in the hope of thus enabling Wordsworth to 
devote his attention to his muse, unfettered by anxious 
thoughts of a monetary character. With this loving 
object before him, he had made a voyage in the year 
1 80 1 without success. Again, in the spring of 1803, 
he sailed with the same hope in his heart, but only on 
this occasion also to return, without having in any 
degree been able to further its realization. 

In the mean time, money which had been long with- 
held from the Wordsworths by the former Earl of 
Lonsdale, had been honorably paid by his successor. 
Although the main object which Captain Wordsworth 
had in view in his former expeditions thus no longer 
existed, he decided once more to brave the fortunes 
of the deep. Being, in the year 1804, appointed to 
the command of the East Indiaman, Abergavenny, 
bound for the East, he sailed from Portsmouth, in the 
early part of 1805, upon a voyage on which many 
hopes were built. We are informed that on this occa- 
sion the value of the cargo (including specie) was 
^270,000, and that there were on board 402 persons. 
Not only did Captain Wordsworth take with him the 
share which had come to him of the money paid by 
the Earl of Lonsdale, but also ^1,200 belonging to his 
brother William and his sister. The bright hopes were, 
however, doomed to end in the saddest of disaster. 



CAPTAIN WORDSWORTH. 1 29 

Owing to the incompetence of a pilot, the ship struck 
off the Bill of Portland on the 5 th February, 1805. 
Captain Wordsworth died, as he had lived, cheerfully- 
doing his duty. Though he might have saved his own 
life, he bravely remained at his post to the last, and 
perished with most of the crew. 

Writing of the sad occurrence to Sir George Beau- 
mont shortly after, Wordsworth says: — " My poor 
sister and my wife, who loved him almost as we did 
(for he was one of the most amiable of men) are in 
miserable affliction, which I do all in my power to 
alleviate ; but, Heaven knows, I want consolation 
myself. I can say nothing higher of my ever-dear 
brother than that he was worthy of his sister, who is 
now weeping beside me, and of the friendship of 
Coleridge ; meek, affectionate, silently enthusiastic, 
loving all quiet things, and a poet in every thing but 
words." In a postscript he adds : — "I shall do all in 
my power to sustain my sister under her sorrow, which 
is, and long will be, bitter and poignant. We did not 
love him as a brother merely, but as a man of original 
mind, and an honor to all about him. Oh ! dear 
friend, forgive me for talking thus. We have had no 
tidings from Coleridge. I tremble for the moment 
when he is to hear of my brother's death ; it will dis- 
tress him to the heart, — and his poor body cannot 
bear sorrow. He loved my brother, and he knows 
how we at Grasmere loved him." 

The friendship between the Wordsworths and Charles 
and Mary Lamb, formed during the Nether Stowey 
period, had continued, and they had been regular 



130 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

correspondents. Shortly after the sad death of her 
brother Miss Wordsworth had, in the fulness of her 
heart, written to Miss Lamb. Although the response 
to the communication is well known it should find a 
place here. Miss Lamb's reply shows how well quali- 
fied she was to sympathize in her friend's sufferings. 
She had, indeed, been taught in the same school. She 
says : — "I thank you, my kind friend, for your most 
comfortable letter ; till I saw your own handwriting I 
could not persuade myself that I should do well to 
write to you, though I have often attempted it ; but I 
always left off dissatisfied with what I had written, and 
feeling that I was doing an improper thing to intrude 
upon your sorrow. I wished to tell you that you would 
one day feel the kind of peaceful state of mind, and 
sweet memory of the dead, which you so happily de- 
scribe as now almost begun ; but I felt that it was 
improper and most grating to the feelings of the 
afflicted to say to them that the memory of their 
affliction would in time become a constant part, not 
only of their dream, but of their most wakeful sense 
of happiness. That you would see every object with 
and through your lost brother, and that that would at 
last become a real and everlasting source of comfort 
to you I felt, and well knew from my own experience 
in sorrrow \ but till you yourself began to feel this I 
didn't dare tell you so ; but I send you some poor 
lines, which I wrote under this conviction of mind, 
and before I heard Coleridge was returning home. I 
will transcribe them now before I finish my letter, lest 
a false shame prevent me then, for I know they are 



CAPTAIN WORDSWORTH. 131 

much worse than they ought to be, written as they 
were with strong feeling and on such a subject ; every 
line seems to me to be borrowed ; but I had no better 
way of expressing my thoughts, and I never have the 
power of altering or amending any thing I have once 
laid aside with dissatisfaction : — 

" ' Why is he wandering on the sea ? 
Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be. 
By slow degrees he'd steal away 
Their woe and gently bring a ray 
(So happily he'd time relief) 
Of comfort from their very grief. 
He'd tell them that their brother dead, 
When years have passed o'er their head, 
Will be remembered with such holy, 
True, and perfect melancholy, 
That ever this lost brother John 
Will be their heart's companion. 
His voice they'll always hear, 
His face they'll always see; 
There's nought in life so sweet 
As such a memory.' " 

Miss Wordsworth's reply to this letter has not been 
preserved. It came to the hands of Charles Lamb 
when his sister was undergoing one of her temporary 
but most sad confinements, in the asylum she periodi- 
cally visited. On the 14th of June, 1805, Charles 
wrote for her to acknowledge the letter, one from 
which the following extract may be given : — " Your 
long, kind letter has not been thrown away (for it has 
given me great pleasure to find you are all resuming 
your old occupations and are better) ; but poor Mary, 



132 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

to whom it is addressed, cannot yet relish it. She 
has been attacked by one of her severe illnesses, and 
is at present from home. Last Monday week was the 
day she left me, and I hope I may calculate upon 
having her again in a month or little more. I am 
rather afraid late hours have, in this case, contributed 
to her indisposition. I have every reason to suppose 
that this illness, like all the former ones, will be but 
temporary ; but I cannot always feel so. Meantime 
she is dead to me, and I miss a prop. All my strength 
is gone, and I am like a fool, bereft of her co-opera- 
tion. I dare not think lest I should think wrong, so 
used am I to look up to her in the least as in the 
biggest perplexity. To say all that I know of her 
would be more than I think anybody could believe, or 
even understand ; and when I hope to have her well 
again with me, it would be sinning against her feelings 
to go about to praise her, for I can conceal nothing 
that I do from her. She is older and wiser and better 
than I, and all my wretched imperfections I cover to 
myself by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She 
would share life and death, heaven and hell with me. 
She lives but for me ; and I know I have been wasting 
and teasing her life for five years past incessantly with 
my cursed drinking and ways of going on. But even 
in this upbraiding of myself I am offending against 
her, for I know that she has clung to me for better for 
worse ; and if the balance has been against her hitherto 
it was a noble trade." 

The following letter of Charles Lamb, addressed 
" to Mr. and Miss Wordsworth/' on the 28th of Sep- 



CAPTAIN WORDSWORTH. 1 33 

tember, 1805, enclosing his " Farewell to Tobacco " 
may also find a place here : — 

"I wish you may think this a handsome farewell to my 
' Friendly Traitress.' Tobacco has been my evening comfort 
and my morning curse for nearly five years ; and you know how 
difficult it is from refraining to pick one's lips even, when it 
has become a habit. This poem is the only one which I have 
finished since so long as when I wrote ' Hester Savory.' I 
have had it in my head to do this two years, but tobacco stood 
in its own light when it gave me headaches that prevented my 
singing its praises. Now you have got it, you have got all my 
store, for I have absolutely not another line. No more has 
Mary. We have nobody about us that cares for poetry ; and 
who will rear grapes when he shall be the sole eater ? Perhaps 
if you encourage us to show you what we may write, we may 
do something now and then before we absolutely forget the 
quantity of an English line for want of practice. The 'To- 
bacco ' being a little in the way in Withers (whom Southey so 
much likes) perhaps you will somehow convey it to him with 
my kind remembrances. Then, everybody will have seen it 
that I wish to see it, I having sent it to Malta. 

" I remain, dear W. and D., 

" Yours truly, 

"C. LAMB." 



134 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 



CHAPTER XI. 

DE QUINCEY. — HIS DESCRIPTION OF MISS WORDSWORTH. 
ALLAN BANK. 

IT was in the year 1807 that De Quincey was added 
to the number of the literary friends of the Words- 
worths. He has given an interesting account of the 
way in which the acquaintanceship was first formed. 
He had, indeed, been for some years an ardent 
admirer of the poet, and had had some correspond- 
ence with him in 1803. The characteristic timidity 
of this wayward genius is illustrated by the fact, that 
although De Quincey had conceived an eager longing 
to form the personal acquaintance of Wordsworth, and 
had been favored with a standing invitation to visit 
him, he allowed upwards of four years to pass without 
availing himself of the privilege of the meeting, "for 
which, beyond all things under heaven, he longed." 

He has recorded how he had on two occasions 
taken a long journey with no other object. On one 
of these occasions he had proceeded as far only as 
Coniston — a distance from Grasmere of eight miles 
— when, his courage failing him, he returned. 

The second time he actually so far kept up his 
courage as to traverse the distance between Coniston 



DE QUINCE 'Y'S DESCRIPTION. 1 35 

and the Vale of Grasmere, and came in sight of the 
"little white cottage gleaming among trees," which 
was the goal of his desire. After, however, he had 
caught " one hasty glimpse of this loveliest of land- 
scapes," he " retreated like a guilty thing." This was 
in 1806. During the following year circumstances 
combined to bring about the much desired meeting. 

A short time after an introduction to Coleridge, in 
the summer of this year, De Quincey learnt that Cole- 
ridge, who was engaged to lecture in town, desired to 
send his family to Keswick, and he was glad to accept 
De Quincey's offer to escort them. As Grasmere lay in 
their route, and Mrs. Coleridge was a cherished friend 
of the Wordsworths, a call upon them was the most 
natural thing, as was also an invitation to spend the 
night, and resume their journey on the following day. 

Describing the cottage, De Quincey says : " A little 
semi- vestibule between two doors prefaces the entrance 
into what may be considered the principal room. It 
was an oblong square, not above eight and a-half feet 
high, sixteen feet long, and twelve feet broad ; very 
prettily wainscotted from the floor to the ceiling with 
dark-polished oak, slightly embellished with carving. 
One window there was, a perfect and unpretending 
cottage window, with little diamond panes, embowered 
at almost every season of the year with roses, and, in 
the summer and autumn, with a profusion of jasmine, 
and other fragrant shrubs." 

After a description of Mrs. Wordsworth, as before 
alluded to, he follows with a most interesting account 
of the appearance of Miss Wordsworth : " Immediately 



I36 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

behind her moved a lady shorter, slighter, and, per- 
haps, in all other respects, as different from her in per- 
sonal characteristics, as could have been wished for the 
most effective contrast. Her face was of Egyptian 
brown ; rarely in a woman of English birth had I seen 
a more determinate Gypsy tan. Her eyes were not 
soft, as Mrs. Wordsworth's, nor were they fierce or 
bold ; but they were wild and startling, and hurried 
in their motion. Her manner was warm, and even 
ardent ; her sensibility seemed constitutionally deep ; 
and some subtle fire of impassioned intellect appar- 
ently burned within her, which, being alternately 
pushed forward into a conspicuous expression, by the 
irrepressible instincts of her temperament, and then 
immediately checked, in obedience to the decorum 
of her sex and age, and her maidenly condition, gave 
to her whole demeanor, and to her conversation, an 
air of embarrassment, and even of self-conflict, that was 
almost distressing to witness. Even her very utterance 
and enunciation often suffered in point of clearness and 
steadiness from the agitation of her excessive organic 
sensibility. At times the self-counteraction and self- 
baffling of her feelings caused her even to stammer, 
and so determinately to stammer, that a stranger who 
should have seen her, and quitted her in that state of 
feeling, would certainly have set her down for one 
plagued with that infirmity of speech as distressingly 
as Charles Lamb himself. This was Miss Wordsworth, 
the only sister of the poet — his ' Dorothy,' who natu- 
rally owed so much to the life-long intercourse with 
her great brother, in his most solitary and sequestered 



DE QUINCEY'S DESCRIPTION. 1 37 

years ; but, on the other hand, to whom he has ac- 
knowledged obligations of the profoundest nature ; 
and, in particular, this mighty one, through which 
we also, the admirers and worshippers of this great 
poet, are become equally her debtors — that whereas 
the intellect of Wordsworth was, by its original ten- 
dency, too stern, too austere, too much enamoured of 
an ascetic harsh sublimity, she it was, — the lady who 
paced by his side continually through sylvan and 
mountain tracts — in Highland glens and in the dim 
recesses of German charcoal burners — that first couched 
his eye to the sense of beauty, humanized him by 
the gentler charities, and ingrafted with her delicate 
female touch those graces upon the ruder growths of 
his nature, which have since clothed the forest of his 
genius with a foliage corresponding in loveliness and 
beauty to the strength of its boughs and the massiness 
of its trunks. The greatest deductions from Miss 
Wordsworth's attractions, and from the exceeding in- 
terest which surrounded her in right of her character, 
of her history, and of the relation which she fulfilled to- 
wards her brother, were the glancing quickness of her 
motions, and other circumstances in her deportment 
(such as her stooping attitude when walking) which 
gave an ungraceful, and even unsexual, character to 
her appearance when out of doors. She did not culti- 
vate the graces which preside over the person and its 
carriage. But, on the other hand, she was a person of 
very remarkable endowments, intellectually ; and, in 
addition to the other great services which she ren- 
dered to her brother, this I may mention as greater 



138 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

than all the rest, and it was one which equally oper- 
ated to the benefit of every casual companion in a 
walk — viz., the exceeding sympathy, always ready and 
always profound, by which she made all that one could 
tell her, all that one could describe, all that one could 
quote from a foreign author, reverberate, as it were, a 
plusieurs reprises, to one's own feelings, by the mani- 
fest impression it made upon hers. The pulses of light 
are not more quick or more inevitable in their flow and 
undulation than were the answering and echoing move- 
ments of her sympathizing attention. Her knowledge 
of literature was irregular and thoroughly unsystematic. 
She w T as content to be ignorant of many things ; but 
what she knew and had really mastered lay where it 
could not be disturbed — in the temple of her own 
most fervid heart." 

Proceeding to compare his impressions of the two 
ladies he adds : — " Miss Wordsworth had seen more 
of life, and even of good company ; for she had lived, 
when quite a girl, under the protection of Dr. Cook- 
son, a near relative, Canon of Windsor, and a personal 
favorite of the Royal family, especially of George III. 
Consequently she ought to have been the more pol- 
ished of the two ; and yet, from greater natural apti- 
tudes for refinement of manner in her sister-in-law, 
and partly, perhaps, from her more quiet and subdued 
manner, Mrs. Wordsworth would have been pronounced 
very much the more lady-like person." 

De Quincey excuses the large latitude used in his 
descriptions on the ground of " the interest which at- 
taches to any one so nearly connected with a great 



DE QUINCE Y'S DESCRIPTION. 1 39 

poet," and the repetition of them is, perhaps, to be 
justified only for the same reason. 

In further allusion to Miss Wordsworth he says : — 
" Miss Wordsworth was too ardent and fiery a crea- 
ture to maintain the reserve essential to dignity ; and 
dignity was the last thing one thought of in the pres- 
ence of one so natural, so fervent in her feelings, and 
so embarrassed in their utterance — sometimes, also, in 
the attempt to check them. It must not, however, be 
supposed, that there was any silliness, or weakness of 
enthusiasm, about her. She was under the continual 
restraint of severe good sense, though liberated from 
that false shame which, in so many persons, accompa- 
nies all expressions of natural emotion ; and she had 
too long enjoyed the ennobling conversation of her 
brother, and his admirable comments on the poets, 
which they read in common, to fail in any essential 
point of logic or propriety of thought. Accordingly, 
her letters, though the most careless and unelaborate 
— nay, the most hearty that can be imagined — are 
models of good sense and just feeling. In short, be- 
yond any person I have known in this world, Miss 
Wordsworth was the creature of impulse ; but, as a 
woman most thoroughly virtuous and well principled, 
as one who could not fail to be kept right by her own 
excellent heart, and as an intellectual creature from 
her cradle, with much of her illustrious brother's pe- 
culiarity of mind — finally as one who had been, in 
effect, educated and trained by that very brother — 
she won the sympathy and respectful regard of every 
man worthy to approach her." 



140 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

De Quincey subsequently relates how he was enter- 
tained for the night in the best bedroom of the poet's 
home, and on the following morning discovered Miss 
Wordsworth preparing the breakfast in the little sitting- 
room. He adds : — "On the third morning the whole 
family, except the two children, prepared for the ex- 
pedition across the mountains. I had heard of no 
horses, and took it for granted that we were to walk ; 
however, at the moment of starting, a cart — the com- 
mon farmer's cart of the country — made its appear- 
ance ; and the driver was a bonny young woman of 
the vale. Accordingly, we were carted along to the 
little town, or village, of Ambleside — three and a half 
miles distant. Our style of travelling occasioned no 
astonishment ; on the contrary, we met a smiling salu- 
tation wherever we appeared — Miss Wordsworth be- 
ing, as I observed, the person the most familiarly known 
of our party, and the one who took upon herself 
the whole expenses of the flying colloquies exchanged 
with stragglers on the road." 

Although the little home at Town End is so closely 
identified with Wordsworth as being his residence in 
his poetic prime he this year (1807) found it neces- 
sary, in consequence of his increasing family, to re- 
move to a larger house. He went to Allan Bank, 
about a mile distant, and remained there four years. 
This residence is not nearly so closely connected with 
the memory of the Wordsworths as either Dove Cottage 
or Rydal Mount. The time was not, however, by any 
means an unproductive one, for here he composed the 
greater part of the " Excursion," the whole of which 



DE QUINCE 'Y'S DESCRIPTION. 141 

poem is said to have been transcribed by his faithful 
and industrious sister. It is interesting to know that 
the now historic cottage, which is possessed of such a 
charm as the first mountain home of Miss Wordsworth 
in this district, was afterwards for some years the resi- 
dence of De Quincey himself. After his first visit, of 
which he has given such a graphic account, it appears 
that he paid another towards the end of 1808 ; and 
that he then enjoyed the hospitality of the Words- 
worths until the February following, when, having 
assisted during a stay in London in the correction in 
its progress through the press of Wordsworth's pam- 
phlet, "The Convention of Cintra," he formed the 
project of settling in Grasmere. Writing to him Miss 
Wordsworth says : — " Soon you must have rest, and 
we shall all be thankful. You have indeed been a 
treasure to us while you have been in London, having 
spared my brother so much anxiety and care. We 
are very grateful to you." 

Whatever service De Quincey rendered to Words- 
worth in assisting in the publication of " The Conven- 
tion of Cintra " was much more than repaid in the 
active kindness of Miss Wordsworth herself, who was 
for some months engaged in preparing the cottage at 
Town End for its new resident. It was, indeed, no 
small service for her to undertake the multifarious and 
exhausting duties in connection with the furnishing 
and fitting up of a home ; and shows not only her 
unflagging activity and energy, but also her sound 
sense and excellent judgment. As an instance of her 
thoughtful economy on the occasion may be mentioned 



142 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

her reason for choosing mahogany for book shelves 
instead of deal, for she says : — " Native woods are 
dear ; and that in case De Quincey should leave the 
country and have a sale, no sort of wood sells so well 
at second-hand as mahogany." To Miss Wordsworth 
was also entrusted the duty of engaging a housekeeper 
for De Quincey. 

The frequent allusions in these pages to De Quincey, 
and his close association for some years with the 
Wordsworths, render it necessary that some further 
reference should be made to his subsequent connection 
with Grasmere. The following is a description given 
by him of his own life in 1812 : — 

"And what am I doing among the mountains? 
Taking opium. Yes ; but what else ? Why, reader, 
in 1 81 2, the year we are now arrived at, as well as 
for some years previous, I have been chiefly studying 
German metaphysics, as the writings of Kant, Fichte, 
Schelling, &c. And how, and in what manner do I 
live ? In short, what class or description of men do 
I belong to? I am at this period, — viz., in 1812, — 
living in a cottage ; and with a single female servant, 
who, amongst my neighbors, passes by the name of my 
'housekeeper.' And, as a scholar and a man of learned 
education, I may presume to class myself as an un- 
worthy member of that indefinite body called gentlemen. 
Partly on the ground I have assigned, — partly be- 
cause, from having no visible calling or business, it is 
rightly judged that I must be living on my private 
fortune, — I am so classed by my neighbors ; and by 
the courtesy of modern England, I am usually ad- 



DE QUINCE Y. 1 43 

dressed on letters, &c., Esquire. . . . Am I married? 
Not yet. And I still take opium? On Saturday 
nights. . . . And how do I find my health after all 
this opium-eating? In short, how do I do? Why, 
pretty well, I thank you, reader. In fact, if I dared 
to say the simple truth (though, in order to satisfy the 
theories of some medical men, I ought to be ill), I 
was never better in my life than in the spring of 181 2 ; 
and I hope, sincerely, that the quantity of claret, port, 
or ' London particular Madeira,' which, in all probabil- 
ity, you, good reader, have taken, and design to take, 
for every term of eight years during your natural life, 
may as little disorder your health as mine was disor- 
dered by all the opium I had taken (though in quantity 
such that I might well have bathed and swum in it) for 
the eight years between 1804 and 181 2." 

In 181 6 De Quincey married a young woman named 
Margaret Simpson, the daughter of a farmer living in 
a cottage under Nab Scar, not far from his own at 
Town End, who became devoted to his interests. He 
continued to reside partly at Grasmere until the year 
1830, although his literary duties necessitated his 
being much at London and Edinburgh. It was in 
182 1 that his now famous "Confessions of an Opium 
Eater" began to appear in the pages of the London 
Magazine. Afterwards his connection with Black- 
wood took him a good deal to Edinburgh. Although 
he and his wife did not like the idea of quitting alto- 
gether the peaceful vale where she had been reared, 
it became evident that it was undesirable to keep up 
two houses, leaving his wife and children so much 



144 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

alone at Grasmere. The following extract from a 
letter written by Miss Wordsworth to him in Novem- 
ber of this year shows her warm interest in him and 
his family, and her readiness to give well-timed sym- 
pathy and aid. After alluding to a visit paid by her 
to Mrs. De Quincey, and the health of the children, 
she says : — " Mrs. De Quincey seemed, on the whole, 
in very good spirits ; but, with something of sadness 
in her manner, she told me you were not likely very 
soon to be at home. She then said that you had, at 
present, some literary employments at Edinburgh, 
and had, besides, an offer (or something to this effect) 
of a permanent engagement, the nature of which she 
did not know, but that you hesitated about accept- 
ing it, as it might necessitate you to. settle in Edin- 
burgh. To this I replied, ' Why not settle there, for 
the time, at least, that this engagement lasts ? Lodg- 
ings are cheap at Edinburgh, and provisions and coals 
not dear. Of this fact I had some weeks'- experience 
four years ago.' I then added that it was my firm 
opinion that you could never regularly keep up your 
engagements at a distance from the press, and, said I, 
' pray tell him so when you write.' She replied, l Do 
write yourself.' Now I could not refuse to give her 
pleasure by so doing, especially being assured that my 
letter would not be wholly worthless to you, having 
such agreeable news to send of your family." 

This excellent advice was soon afterwards acted 
upon, and Edinburgh became the scene of De Quin- 
cey's further life and labors. Here he died on the 8th 
of December, 1859, aged 74 years. 



THE CHILDREN OF B LENTA RN GHYLL. 1 45 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE CHILDREN OF BLENTARN GHYLL. DEATH OF 

WORDSWORTH'S CHILDREN. 

A MELANCHOLY incident which occurred dur- 
ing her residence at Allan Bank may be men- 
tioned, since Miss Wordsworth took such an active, 
sympathetic interest in the relief and succor of the 
sufferers. It is not, however, necessary to relate in 
detail the sad story, as this has been done by De 
Quincey and others. 

Nestling in the valley of Easedale still stands a 
humble farmhouse called Blentarn Ghyll, which takes 
its name from a mountain ravine near by. Here, in 
the year 1808, lived an industrious farmer and his wife 
named George and Sarah Green, with their six children, 
the youngest a baby, and the eldest a girl of nine or 
ten. On the morning of a day long to be remem- 
bered George Green and his wife started off over the 
mountains — a distance of five or six miles — to Lang- 
dale, to attend a sale of furniture (on which occasions 
these scattered neighbors used to meet) intending to 
return the same evening. Notwithstanding that some 
of their friends endeavored to dissuade them from 
returning by the mountains, they, in the afternoon, 



I46 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

started on their return journey. And neither of them 
was ever seen in life again. A fall of snow came, in 
which they hopelessly lost their way, and, as De Quin- 
cey says, " they disappeared into the cloud of death." 
Meanwhile, the poor little children sat round the fire 
waiting in vain for their parents' return. The eldest, 
little Agnes Green, whose emotions were, during that 
and subsequent days, changed from those of a child of 
tender years to those of a mother, became heroic in 
her devotion to her tiny brothers and sisters. The 
lonely farmhouse, with its little inhabitants, was for 
some days surrounded by drifts of snow, which pre- 
vented their leaving it. Meantime, as day succeeded 
day, the brave Agnes cheered up the others as best 
she could, preparing their scanty meals, and making 
the elder ones say their prayers night and morning. 
It was not until the third day that she was able to 
force her way through the snow and tell the sad tale, 
inquiring with tearful face whether her father and 
mother had been seen. 

Such was the interest felt in the story of their loss, 
that all the able-bodied men of Grasmere formed 
themselves into a search band ; but it was not until 
after the expiration of three days that the bodies of 
the faithful couple were found near Dungeon Ghyll, 
the husband being at the bottom of a rock, from 
which he had fallen, where his wife had crept round 
to him. They were only a few hundred yards from a 
farmhouse, to which, however, their cries for help had 
not reached, or had been mistaken. In the future of 
the helpless orphans Miss Wordsworth took an active 



THE CHILDREN OF B LENTA RN GHYLL. 1 47 

interest, and raised a considerable sum of money for 
their benefit. The Royal Family were made ac- 
quainted with the sad history, and the Queen herself 
and her daughters became subscribers to the fund. 
The children were taken into different families in the 
neighborhood, one of them going to live with the 
Wordsworths. The heroic little Agnes died many 
years ago, and is buried in Grasmere Churchyard be- 
side her parents. Three of these children yet survive, 
the eldest of whom, now 85 years old, has given me 
some of the foregoing particulars. He still well re- 
members the circumstances of that fatal journey, 
and the vain waiting, during the hours of night, for 
the father and mother who never returned. Another 
survivor — the one who was at the time a little baby 
girl — is now blind, and, I believe, a great grand- 
mother. 

Among other lasting friendships of the Wordsworths 
which we find existing about this period is that with 
Mr. Henry Crabb Robinson, whose " Diary and Remi- 
niscences" afford some pleasant recollections of many 
of the literati of his time among whom he had a very 
extensive acquaintance. In 1810 Miss Wordsworth 
had been paying a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Clarkson (of 
anti- slave trade celebrity) at Bury. Mr. Robinson 
met her there, and, being about to return to London 
when Miss Wordsworth was intending to pay a visit to 
Charles and Mary Lamb, he undertook to escort her 
thither. Upon her return home she wrote to him the 
following letter : — 



148 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

" Grasmere, Nov. 6, 1810. 

"My Dear Sir, — I am very proud of the commission my 
brother has given me, as it affords me an opportunity of ex- 
pressing the pleasure with which I think of you, and of our 
long journey side by side in the pleasant sunshine, our splendid 
entrance into the great city, and our rambles together in the 
crowded streets. 1 assure you I am not ungrateful for even 
the least of your kind attentions, and shall be happy in return 
to be your guide amongst these mountains, where, if you bring 
a mind free from care, I can promise you a rich store of noble 
enjoyments. My brother and sister will be exceedingly happy 
to see you ; and, if you tell him stories from Spain of enthusi- 
asm, patriotism, and detestation of the usurper, my brother will 
be a ready listener ; and in presence of these grand works of 
nature you may feed each other's lofty hopes. We are waiting 
with the utmost anxiety for the issue of that battle which you 
arranged so nicely by Charles Lamb's fireside. My brother 
goes to seek the newspapers whenever it is possible to get a 
sight of one, and he is almost out of patience that the tidings 
are delayed so long. 

" Pray, as you are most likely to see Charles at least from 
time to time, tell me how they are going on. There is nobody 
in the world out of our house for whom I am more deeply in- 
terested. You will, I know, be happy that our little ones are 
all going on well. The delicate little Catherine, the only one 
for whom we had any serious alarm, gains ground daily. Yet 
it will be long before she can be or have the appearance of 
being a stout child. There was great joy in the house at my 
return, which each showed in a different way. They are sweet 
wild creatures, and I think you would love them all. John is 
thoughtful with his wildness; Dora alive, active, and quick; 
Thomas, innocent and simple as a new-born babe. John had 
no feeling but of bursting joy when he saw me. Dorothy's 
first question was, ' Where is my doll ? ' We had delightful 
weather when I first got home; but on the first morning 
Dorothy roused me from my sleep with, ' It is time to get up, 



WORDSWORTH'S CHILDREN. 1 49 

Aunt; it is a blasty morning — it does blast so.' And the 
next morning, not more encouraging, she said, 'It is a hailing 
morning — it hails so hard.' You must know that our house 
stands on a hill, exposed to all hails and blasts. . . . 

"D. WORDSWORTH." 



From the above letter it will be seen, as can be well 
understood, that Miss Wordsworth was a great favorite 
with the poet's children, of whom there were then born 
the four mentioned. To these children, and the in- 
terests and enjoyments of their young lives, she de- 
voted herself with the unselfish devotion and zeal 
which so pervaded her life and animated her conduct. 

Sara Coleridge, the daughter of Samuel Taylor Cole- 
ridge, between whose family and that of Wordsworth 
the most cordial relations always existed, in the record 
of her early life has a pleasant recollection of a visit 
paid by her to Allan Bank when she was six years old. 
She writes : — " That journey to Grasmere gleams be- 
fore me as the shadow of a shade. Allan Bank is a 
large house on the hill overlooking Easedale on one 
side and Grasmere on the other. Dorothy, Mr. Words- 
worth's only daughter, was at the time very picturesque 
in her appearance, with her long thick yellow locks, 
which were never cut, but curled with papers, a thing 
which seems much out of keeping with the poetic, simple 
household. I remember being asked by my father 
and Miss Wordsworth, the poet's sister, if I did not 
think her very pretty. ' No,' said I, bluntly, for which 
I met with a rebuff, which made me feel as if I was a 
culprit." 



150 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

Miss Coleridge also gives the following reminiscence : 
— " Miss Wordsworth, Mr. Wordsworth's sister, of most 
poetic eye and temper, took a great part with the chil- 
dren. She told us once a pretty story of a primrose, 
I think, which she espied by the wayside when she 
went to see me soon after my birth, though that was 
at Christmas, and how this same primrose was still 
blooming when she went back to Grasmere." 

The life of Miss Wordsworth had hitherto been, on 
the whole, one of serene and calm enjoyment. In the 
social circle bound so closely in mutual affection, and 
so richly endowed with the faculty of making herself 
happy — of truly living — the only cloud during many 
years of brightness had been the death of her brother 
John. It could not, however, but have been expected 
that the happy circle would become still more ac- 
quainted with the common lot of mortal life. 

During their residence at the parsonage at Grasmere, 
where they were living in 1812, the circle was broken 
by the loss of two of their children, then five in num- 
ber. In the case of one, the interesting and delicate 
little Kate, then about four years old, the circumstances 
were peculiarly distressing. The way in which her very 
brief illness was caused has not been very clearly 
stated. De Quincey has attributed it to what he calls 
by the harsh name of the " criminal negligence " of 
one of the children of the George and Sarah Green 
before-mentioned, whom the Wordsworths had taken 
to live with them. He relates that while little Cath- 
erine was under the care of Sarah Green she was 
allowed to eat a number of raw carrots, in consequence 



DEA TH OF KA TE WORDS WOR TH. 1 5 I 

of which she was very shortly seized with strong con- 
vulsions. Although she partially recovered the im- 
mediate effect, her left side remained in a disabled 
condition. 

It was some months after this that little Kate, hav- 
ing gone to bed bright and happy at the hour of a 
June sunset, was discovered in a speechless condition 
about midnight, and died in convulsions after a few 
hours' suffering. While, as may be imagined, the grief 
of her parents at the loss was great, that of De Quincey 
(who was not at Grasmere at the time, and was in- 
formed of the event by Miss Wordsworth) was so 
poignant and extravagant as to become romantic. The 
dear child had got so near the heart of the little 
dreamy opium-eater — had, in fact, found so warm a 
corner there — that he seemed to be almost over- 
whelmed. The heart was empty, and the eyes that 
could no longer gaze upon the living form were filled 
with its image. He used to imagine that he saw her. 
So great was his grief that we are told he often spent 
the night upon her grave. This may appear very ex- 
travagant, as it doubtless is ; but we cannot measure a 
man like De Quincey by any ordinary standard. Pos- 
sessing as he did a gigantic and immortal genius, he 
was at the same time one of the most unimaginable 
and eccentric, unreal and dreamy of beings that ever 
owned a warm human heart. The Wordsworth chil- 
dren were especially dear to him, and particularly so 
little Catherine. And they returned his affection. 
Three weeks before her death he had seen her for the 
last time. In his letter to Miss Wordsworth he says : 



1 



152 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

— " The children were speaking to me altogether, and 
I was saying one thing to one and another to another, 
and she, who could not speak loud enough to over- 
power the other voices, had got on a chair, and putting 
her hand upon my mouth, she said, with her sweet 
importunateness of action and voice, ' Kinsey, Kinsey, 
what a bring Katy from London ? ' I believe she said 
it twice ; and I remember that her mother noticed the 
earnestness and intelligence of her manner, and looked 
at me and smiled. This was the last time that I heard 
her sweet voice distinctly, and I shall never hear one 
like it again." 

The death of Catherine was followed six months 
later by that of her brother Thomas, six and a half 
years old. This double affliction made the Words- 
worths glad to remove from the neighborhood of the 
churchyard, which so constantly reminded them of 
their loss. It was for this reason that, in 1813, they 
went to reside at Rydal Mount, which was thenceforth 
the home of Miss Wordsworth until her death — a 
period of more than forty years. 



RYDAL MOUNT. 1 53 



CHAPTER XIII. 

REMOVAL TO RYDAL MOUNT. DORA WORDSWORTH. 

SINCE their settlement in Grasmere, the worldly 
circumstances of Wordsworth, as well as those of 
his sister, had considerably improved. We have seen 
upon what slender, combined means they began house- 
keeping, living in " noble poverty " — and were happy. 
Shortly afterwards the then Earl of Lonsdale honorably 
paid to the Wordsworths the large sum of money 
which, as has been before mentioned, had been with- 
held by his father. The share of each of them of this 
is said to have been about ^1,800. In addition to 
this the poet's muse had begun to be more profitable 
to him. Though he had not then been awarded that 
high and foremost rank in the inspired choir which he 
has since attained, yet his power as a great poet was 
beginning to be acknowledged by more than the select 
number who had from the first recognized his genius. 

About this time he also had conferred upon him the 
appointment as distributor of stamps for Westmore- 
land. While the emoluments of this office formed a 
substantial addition to the poet's income, its duties 
were such that they could be chiefly performed by 
deputy. 



154 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

In obtaining for their new home the now classic 
Rydal Mount, the good fortune of the Words worths 
did not fail them. The " modest mansion " is well 
known, and many descriptions of it have been given. 
For the beauty of its situation, and the amenities of 
its surroundings, it is almost unsurpassed. It has been 
somewhere stated that whilst most persons, who, hav- 
ing chosen their own residences, think them the first, 
they are all ready to give the second place to Rydal 
Mount. I have on two occasions since the poet's 
death had the good fortune to obtain admittance to 
the grounds, and, with feelings of reverence and emo- 
tion, paced the terrace-walks, worn by the footsteps 
of the great departed. We are on such occasions 
strikingly reminded of the words of Foster : " What a 
tale could be told by many a room were the walls 
endowed with memory and speech." The house 
stands in an elevated position, being on a plateau on 
the south side of Nab Scar. Striking off from the 
side of the house is a walk called the Upper Terrace. 
From this path the views are exceedingly lovely. Im- 
mediately in front is the Rothay Valley, backed by the 
richly-wooded heights of Loughrigg, with Windermere 
in the distance to the left, " a light thrown into the 
picture in the winter season, and in the summer a 
beautiful feature, changing with every hue of the sky." 
About halfway along the terrace we come to a rustic 
alcove, built of fir poles, and lined with cones. Here, 
we should think, the walk ends, for we are parallel 
with the boundary wall of the garden below; but 
opening a door, we find the road branches slightly to 



RYDAL MOUNT. 155 

the right, and, opening into the far terrace, reveals a 
surprise view. Here we see beneath us Rydal Water, 
gemmed with its romantic islands, and beyond, the 
green heights of Loughrigg Terrace. Following the 
path, with its sloping banks of fern and flowers, for 
about fifty yards, we find it terminated by a little 
wicket-gate, which opens upon a field, whence the old, 
and now grass-green, road to Grasmere is reached. 
On the left side of the Upper Terrace is a dwarf wall, 
niched with ferns and mosses. Below this wall is 
another terrace — a level one — formed by the poet 
himself, chiefly for the sake of Miss Fenwick, who was 
a valued friend, and, in after years, an inmate at Rydal 
Mount. To her the poet dictated the MSS. notes 
upon his poems, referred to in the " Memoirs," and 
elsewhere, as the " MSS. I. F." 

In speaking of the nocturnal aspect of Rydal Mount, 
Wordsworth mentions " the beauty of the situation, its 
being backed and flanked by lofty fells, which bring 
the heavenly bodies to touch, as it were, the earth 
upon the mountain tops, while the prospect in front 
lies open to a length of level valley, the extended 
lake, and a terminating ridge of low hills." 

A poetical description of this chosen retreat, by 
Miss Jewsbury, and published in the Literary Magnet, 
for 1826, may be quoted here : — 

"THE POET'S HOME." 

" Low and white, yet scarcely seen, 
Are its walls for mantling green ; 
Not a window lets in light, 
But through flowers clustering bright; 



I56 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

Not a glance may wander there, 
But it falls on something fair ; 
Garden choice, and fairy mound, 
Only that no elves are found ; 
Winding walk, and sheltered nook, 
For student grave and graver book : 
Or a bird-like bower, perchance, 
Fit for maiden and romance. 
Then, far off, a glorious sheen 
Of wide and sunlit waters seen ; 
Hills that in the distance lie, 
Blue and yielding as the sky ; 
And nearer, closing round the nest, 
The home of all the 'living crest,' 
Other rocks and mountains stand, 
Rugged, yet a guardian band, 
Like those that did, in fable old, 
Elysium from the world enfold. 

" . . . . Companions meet 
Thou shalt have in thy retreat : 
One of long-tried love and truth, 
Thine in age as thine in youth ; 
One, whose locks of partial gray, 
Whisper somewhat of decay; 
Yet whose bright and beaming eye 
Tells of more that cannot die. 

" Then a second form beyond, 
Thine, too, by another bond, 
Sportive, tender, graceful, wild — 
Scarcely woman, more than child — 
One who doth thy heart entwine, 
Like the ever-clinging vine ; 
One to whom thou art a stay, 
As the oak that, scarred and gray, 
Standeth on, and standeth fast, 
Strong and stately to the last. 



DORA WORDSWORTH. 1 57 

" Poet's lot like this hath been ; 
Such, perchance, may I have seen ; 
Or in fancy's fairy land, 
Or in truth, and near at hand : 
If in fancy, then, forsooth, 
Fancy had the force of truth ; 
If, again, a truth it were, 
Then were truth as fancy fair ; 
But, which ever it might be, 
' 'Twas a Paradise to me.' " 

Of the " companions meet " referred to above it is 
evident that the first-named " of long-tried love and 
truth " is Miss Wordsworth ; the second, Mrs. Words- 
worth ; and the third, Miss Dora Wordsworth, the 
poet's daughter, to whom some further reference 
should now be made. 

At the time of the removal to Rydal Mount, in the 
spring of 1S13, the family, in addition to the parents 
and Miss Wordsworth, consisted of three children, of 
whom the second — Dorothy, or Dora, born in 1 804 
— was of the interesting age of nine years. She was 
named after her aunt, Miss Wordsworth ; for, although 
her father would have preferred to have called her 
Mary, the name Dorothy, as he stated to Lady Beau- 
mont, had been so long devoted in his own thoughts 
to the first daughter he might have, he could not 
break his promise to himself. By way of further dis- 
tinguishing her from her aunt, Mr. Crabb Robinson 
used to call her Dorina. To this surviving daughter, 
as she grew up to womanhood, Wordsworth was pas- 
sionately attached. Inheriting as she did, in no slight 
degree, the family genius, he seemed to see reproduced 



I58 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

in her a harmonious blending of the characteristics 
and mental lineaments of his wife and sister, the two 
beings in the world whom he had most devotedly loved. 
Wordsworth's later poems contained several allu- 
sions to Dora. In this place I will quote a stanza or 
two only, from one entitled "The Triad," written in 
celebration of Edith Southey, Dora Wordsworth, and 
Sara Coleridge : — 

" Open, ye thickets ! let her fly, 
Swift as a Thracian Nymph o'er field and height 1 
For She, to all but those who love her, shy, 
Would gladly vanish from a Stranger's sight ; 
Though where she is beloved and loves, 
Light as the wheeling butterfly she moves ; 
Her happy spirit as a bird is free, 
That rifles blossoms on a tree, 
Turning them inside out with arch audacity. 
Alas ! how little can a moment show 
Of an eye where feeling plays 
In ten thousand dewy rays ; 
A face o'er which a thousand shadows go ! 
— She stops — is fastened to that rivulet's side ; 
And there (while, with sedater mien, 
O'er timid waters that have scarcely left 
Their birth-place in the rocky cleft, 
She bends) at leisure may be seen 
Features to old ideal grace allied, 
Amid their smiles and dimples dignified — 
Fit countenance for the soul of primal truth : 
The bland composure of eternal youth ! 

" What more changeful than the sea ? 
But over his great tides 
Fidelity presides ; 
And this light-hearted Maiden, constant is as he. 



DORA WORDSWORTH. 1 59 

High is her aim as heaven above, 

And wide as ether her good-will ; 

And, like the lowly reed, her love 

Can drink its nurture from the scantiest rill : 

Insight as keen as frosty star 

Is to her charity no bar, 

Nor interrupts her frolic graces 

When she is, far from these wild places, 

Encircled by familiar faces." 

Writing of Dora Wordsworth, Miss Coleridge says : 
— "There is truth in the sketch of Dora — poetic 
truth, though such as none but a poetic father would 
have seen. She was unique in her sweetness and 
goodness. I mean that her character was most pecul- 
iar — a compound of vehemence of feeling and gen- 
tleness, sharpness and lovingness, which is not often 
seen." 



160 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

FRIENDS. — TOUR ON CONTINENT. 

SOME reference more special than hitherto should 
be made to the more outer influences which en- 
tered into the life of Miss Wordsworth. Although so 
bound up in her brother, her life presented many 
sides, and her sympathies, as will have been seen, were 
by no means limited in their operation to the house- 
hold circle. Her brother's friends were hers. Prob- 
ably few have been more independent of outside 
friendships, and of society, than the family at Rydal ; 
and at the same time few have been blessed with such 
genial and cultured associates. 

We have seen how close had, for many years, been 
the companionship with Coleridge, whom Lamb has 
called " an archangel a little damaged " — Coleridge, 
the incomprehensible, versatile genius, poet, philoso- 
pher, theologian, metaphysician, and critic — of whom 
it has recently been said that " even in the dilapida- 
tion of his powers, due chiefly, if you will, to his own 
unthrifty management of them, we might, making 
proper deductions, apply to him what Mark Antony 
says of the dead Caesar : — 

' He was the ruins of the noblest man 
That ever lived in the tide of time.' " 



FRIENDS. l6l 

Then we have the sedate and scholarly Southey, the 
brother-in-law of Coleridge, and both of whom, up to 
1810, when Coleridge left the district, resided at Greta 
Hall, near Keswick. Charles and Mary Lamb, also, 
although they could seldom be lured from their be- 
loved London, were, as we have seen, among the 
earliest friends of the Wordsworths, and their home 
generally the abode of Miss Wordsworth during her 
occasional visits to the metropolis. Charles Lloyd, of 
Brathay — the dreamy Quaker, and bosom friend of 
Lamb — also became a neighbor, and an esteemed 
friend. Later, we have seen De Quincey, the intel- 
lectual opium eater, whose growth seems to have been 
almost entirely in the direction of brain (and of whom 
Southey said he wished he was not so very little, and 
did not always forget his great coat !) received into the 
charmed circle ; Crabb Robinson, also, who, though 
not a writer himself, counted amongst his friends some 
of the most eminent literary men of the day. Pro- 
fessor Wilson, of Elleray, the physical and mental 
giant, who resided within, what was to the Words- 
worths and himself, fair walking distance ; afterwards 
Hartley Coleridge, loving and lovable, who inherited 
no small portion of the poetic genius of his more 
illustrious father; and Dr. Arnold, of Rugby fame, 
who settled almost within a stone's-throw of Rydal 
Mount, added to the coterie of men of genius, among 
whom, Wordsworth, from time to time, if not at the 
same time, moved as a revered master, added to the 
interest of this warm centre of intellectual activity. 
Among many other sons of genius who should be 



1 62 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

ranked as friends of Wordsworth was Haydon, the 
painter. He painted Wordsworth on several occa- 
sions, and introduced him into his famous picture of 
" Christ's Entry into Jerusalem." .. Of this Hazlitt said 
it was the " most like his drooping weight of thought 
and expression." Of this picture Haydon, in his auto- 
biography, says : " During the progress of the picture 
of Jerusalem, I resolved to put into it (1816), in a 
side group, Voltaire, as a sneerer, and Newton, as a 
believer. I now (181 7) put Hazlitt's head into my 
picture, looking at Christ as an investigator. It had 
a good effect. I then put in Keats into the back- 
ground, and resolved to introduce Wordsworth, bow- 
ing with reverence and awe. . . . The Centurion, 
the Samaritan Woman, Jairus and his daughter, St. 
Peter, St. John, Newton, Voltaire, the anxious mother 
of the penitent girl, and the girl blushing and hiding 
her face, many heads behind ; in fact the leading 
groups were accomplished, when down came my 
health again, eyes and all." This painting, so enthu- 
siastically received in England, was, unfortunately, 
sent to America, whence it has never returned. Hay- 
don writes, under date September 23, 1831 : " My 
' Jerusalem ' is purchased, and is going to America. 
Went to see it before it was embarked. It was mel- 
ancholy to look, for the last time, at a work which 
had excited so great a sensation in England and Scot- 
land. It was now leaving my native country for- 
ever." 

In speaking of the friends of the Wordsworths, 
some allusion should be made to others, who, if they 



FRIENDS. 163 

were less widely known, were not less warmly appre- 
ciative of their worth, or less closely identified with 
them. Sir George Beaumont, of Coleorton Hall, 
Leicestershire, was for many years a close friend and 
admirer ; and from time to time we find Miss Words- 
worth visiting there. 

Among the ladies who, in after years, became 
closely intimate with the inmates of Rydal Mount 
were Mrs. Fletcher, herself a lady of some literary 
distinction, and her daughter Mary, afterwards Lady 
Richardson. For the sake chiefly of the society of 
the Arnolds and Wordsworths, Mrs. Fletcher — who 
speaks of a tea-party at Rydal Mount as "perhaps the 
highest point in man's civilized life, in all its bearings " 
— became the purchaser of the little mountain farm 
of Lancrigg before-mentioned, so nearly identified 
with Miss Wordvvorth's Easedale rambles, and which 
she converted into the charming retreat it is at the 
present time. Miss Fenwick also, to whom the world 
owes the valuable notes upon the poems, dictated to 
her, at her urgent request, by the poet, after having, 
for very love of the Wordsworths, resided for some 
time in the neighborhood, became, and was for many 
years, a resident at the Mount. From the recently- 
published autobiography of Sir Henry Taylor, we learn 
that this amiable lady, many years before she became 
an inmate at Rydal Mount, had stated she would be 
content to be a servant in that house, that she might 
hear the poet's wisdom. Of the life of Miss Fenwick 
herself, Sir Henry says, it was " a life of love and 
beneficence, as nearly divine as any life upon earth 



1 64 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

that I have known, or heard of, or been capable of 
conceiving." 

From the time of taking up her abode at Rydal 
Mount, the outward life of Miss Wordsworth was 
passed without much change. After the trials which 
had preceded, life in this ideal home appears to have 
been for many years unbroken by any sorrow. It is 
needless to say that Miss Wordsworth's close interest 
in her brother and his career, and in all the incidents 
of his life, never waned. A letter of Miss Wordsworth, 
which has recently been given to the world, written 
when "The White Doe of Rylstone " was about to 
be published (in 1815), shows that he and his work 
were still the first objects of her thought and affection. 
She writes : " My brother was very much pleased with 
your frankness in telling us that you did not perfectly 
like his poem. He wishes to know what your feelings 
were — whether the tale itself did not interest you, or 
whether you could not enter into the conception of 
Emily's character, or take delight in that visionary 
union which is supposed to have existed between her 
and the doe. Do not fear to give him pain. He is 
far too much accustomed to be abused to receive pain 
from it (at least, so far as he himself is concerned) . 
My reason for asking you these questions is, that some 
of your friends, who are equally admirers of the ' White 
Doe,' and of my brother's published poems, think 
that this poem will sell on account of the story ; that 
is, that the story will bear up those points which are 
above the level of the public taste ; whereas the two 
last volumes — except by a few solitary individuals, 



TOUR ON CONTINENT. 1 65 

who are passionately devoted to my brother's works — 
are abused by wholesale. 

" Now, as his sole object in publishing this poem at 
present would be for the sake of the money, he would 
not publish it if he did not think, from the several 
judgments of his friends, that it would be likely to 
have a sale. He has no pleasure in publishing — he 
even detests it ; and if it were not that he is not over 
wealthy he would leave all his works to be published 
after his death. William himself is sure that the 
' White Doe ' will not sell or be admired, except by a 
very few at first, and only yields to Mary's entreaties 
and mine. We are determined, however, if we are 
deceived this time to let him have his own way in 
future." 

The year 1820 was signalized by a lengthened tour 
on the Continent, including France, the Rhine, Italy, 
and Switzerland, in which Miss Wordsworth accom- 
panied her brother and Mrs. Wordsworth, and their 
kinspeople — Mr. and Mrs. Monkhouse. Mr. Crabb 
Robinson was also of the party, and his diary contains 
some pleasant reminiscences of the tour. It is inter- 
esting to note such an entry as the following : " On 
the 5th September the Wordsworths went back to the 
Lake of Como, in order to gratify Miss Wordsworth, 
who wished to see every spot which her brother saw 
in his first journey — a journey made when he was 
young." "The women wear black caps, fitting the 
head closely, with prodigious black gauze wings. Miss 
Wordsworth calls it the ' butterfly cap.' " 

The " Memorials of a Tour on the Continent," 



1 66 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

published by Wordsworth, in 1822, did not constitute 
the only literary result of the tour. Mrs. and Miss 
Wordsworth kept a journal of events and impressions, 
which it is to be greatly regretted has not been pub- 
lished, notwithstanding the expressed desire of the 
poet to the contrary. As a charming memorial of 
this interesting journey, it could not fail to prove 
of great interest. 

Shortly after the publication of these poems we find 
the following letter written by Miss Wordsworth to Mr. 
Crabb Robinson : — 

" 3RD March, 1822. 

"My brother will, I hope, write to Charles Lamb in the 
course of a few days. He has long talked of doing it ; but you 
know how the mastery of his own thoughts (when engaged in 
composition, as he has lately been) often prevents him from 
fulfilling his best intentions; and since the weakness of his 
eyes has returned, he has been obliged to fill up all spaces of 
leisure by going into the open air for refreshment and relief to 
his eyes. We are very thankful that the inflammation, chiefly 
in the lids, is now much abated. It concerns us very much to 
hear so indifferent an account of Lamb and his sister; the 
death of their brother no doubt has afflicted them much more 
than the death of any brother, with whom there had, in near 
neighborhood, been so little personal or family communication, 
would afflict any other minds. We deeply lamented their loss, 
and wished to write to them as soon as we heard of it ; but it 
not being the particular duty of any one of us, and a painful 
task, we put it off, for which we are now sorry, and very much 
blame ourselves. They are too good and too confiding to take 
it unkindly, and that thought makes us feel it more. . . . With 
respect to the tour poems, I am afraid you will think my 
brother's notes not sufficiently copious ; prefaces he has none, 
except to the poem on Goddard's death. Your suggestion as 



TOUR ON CONTINENT. 1 67 

to the bridge at Lucerne set his mind to work ; and if a happy 
mood comes on he is determined even yet, though the work is 
printed, to add a poem on that subject. You can have no idea 
with what earnest pleasure he seized the idea, yet before he 
began to write at all, when he was pondering over his recollec- 
tions, and asking me for hints and thoughts, I mentioned that 
very subject, and he then thought he could make nothing of it. 
You certainly have the gift of setting him on fire. When I 
named (before your letter was read to him) your scheme for 
next autumn his countenance flushed with pleasure, and he 
exclaimed : ' I'll go with him.' Presently, however, the con- 
versation took a sober turn, and he concluded that the journey 
would be impossible; 'and then,' said he, 'if you or Mary, or 
both, were not with me, I should not half enjoy it ; and that is 
impossible.' . . . We have had a long and interesting letter 
from Mrs. Clarkson. Notwithstanding bad times, she writes 
in cheerful spirits, and talks of coming into the North this 
summer, and we really hope it will not end in talk, as Mr. 
Clarkson joins with her; and, if he once determines, a trifle 
will not stop him. Pray read a paper in the London Magazine 
by Hartley Coleridge on the uses of the ' Heathen Mythology 
in Poetry.' It has pleased us very much. The style is won- 
derful for so young a man — so little of effort and no affecta- 
tion. . . . 

"DOROTHY WORDSWORTH." 



The following extract from a letter written by Mr. 
Robinson, in June, 1825, shortly after Lamb's retire- 
ment from the East India Office, will be of interest. 
He writes : " I have not seen the Lambs so often as I 
used to do, owing to a variety of circumstances. Nor 
can I give you the report you naturally looked for of 
his conduct at so great a change in his life. . . . The 
expression of his delight has been child-like (in the 
good sense of that word) . You have read the ' Super- 



l68 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

animated Man.' I do not doubt, I do not fear, that 
he will be unable to sustain ' the weight of chance de- 
sires.' Could he — but I fear he cannot — occupy 
himself in some great work requiring continued and 
persevering attention and labor, the benefit would be 
equally his and the world's. Mary Lamb has re- 
mained so well, that one might almost advise, or 
rather permit, a journey to them. But Lamb has no 
desire to travel. If he had, few things would give me 
so much pleasure as to accompany him. I should be 
proud of taking care of him. But he has a passion for 
solitude, he says, and hitherto he finds that his retire- 
ment from business has not brought leisure." 



FURTHER INFLUENCE. 1 69 



CHAPTER XV. 

FURTHER INFLUENCE. 

BEFORE alluding to the affliction which for many 
years darkened the later life of Miss Wordsworth, 
and gathering together some of the remaining threads 
of her history, it is fitting that something further should 
be said in relation to her sustained influence upon her 
brother and her devotion to him, although it is with a 
feeling of how impossible it is adequately to do this, 
or that the fruit of her dominant presence should ever 
be fully known. 

Those who know Wordsworth, and who, recognizing 
his commanding place in literature, have had their 
sympathies enlarged, their eyes opened to discern in 
Nature and Providence their boundless sources of 
satisfaction and delight — whose hearts have been 
expanded by his high and holy teaching — will be 
ready to recognize all the spiritual aids by which he 
was himself inspired. It would be unjust to others, 
who held high sway over his heart, to say that every- 
thing was due to his sister. At the same time it is 
manifest that she bore no insignificant part, and during 
his early life the largely predominant part in that work, 
and thus was to a great extent instrumental in intro- 



I70 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

ducing the new etfangel of song by which the century's 
literature has been uplifted. The elevating presence 
of such a woman, in the delightful and close relation- 
ship of sister, was to a man of Wordsworth's character, 
itself an inspiration. If it be good to learn to look 
on Nature with a reverential eye, seeing therein the 
Creation of God brought near, then to this poet, as 
Nature's high priest and interpreter is due the gratitude 
of generations. 

As the close companion and stimulator of this great 
poet during the years of preparation and discipline, 
who " first couched his eye to the sense of beauty," 
we owe it indirectly to Miss Wordsworth that Nature 
has become to us so much more than she was to our 
forefathers, has been revealed in a clearer and brighter 
light ; that she speaks to us in a new language, calling 
us away from the lower cares of life, and uplifting us 
to a higher soul-inbreathing and restoring atmosphere 
of repose ; thus begetting a dignity of soul and making 
us capable of higher good, of nobler endeavor, of 
capacities for enjoyment before unknown — keener, 
more satisfying, and enduring. 

Probably few natures are capable of receiving the 
more subtle impressions of beauty in such a way as 
was that of Wordsworth, and fewer still meet with the 
responsive soul able to touch them to the finest issues. 
His boyhood's mind had been impregnated with 
thought, and his young heart bounded with delight 
amid the beauties of earth. His sister came, and 
together they seemed to possess the earth. His 
powers of perception were intensified and rarified. 



FURTHER INFLUENCE. IJl 

The solitudes of Nature became their home, their 
hearts grew still amidst its loveliness : the solemn 
night breathed a benediction. They loved 

" The silence that is in the starry sky, 
The sleep that is among the lonely hills." 

Shall we not say that, viewed in this way, the earth 
becomes almost as an ante- chamber of Heaven, sub- 
duing, and awe-inspiring, leading us to 

" Move along its shades, 
In gentleness of heart ; with gentle hand 
Touch — for there is a spirit in the woods." 

"What a life there is in trees," said Miss Words- 
worth ; and her own life was one not only helping to 
reveal the living speech of the mute world, not only 
finding life where it is by the duller eye unseen, and 
by the dull sense unfelt, but helping to show what a 
noble thing all life may be made. 

It must not be supposed that in what may seem to 
have been a complete abandonment to the worship of 
her brother and of Nature Miss Wordsworth had no 
heart for others, no room for human sympathy. She 
was, on the contrary, during their early years at Gras- 
mere especially, widely known and beloved ; her ready 
ear was always open to the tale of sorrow, and her 
helping hand ready to aid. It was after the com- 
mencement of her long and tedious illness that Words- 
worth said of her he did not believe her tenderness of 
heart was ever exceeded by any of God's creatures, 



172 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

that her loving-kindness had no bounds. The follow- 
ing lines written by Mrs. Fletcher, when 82 years of 
age, after reading Miss Wordsworth's Grasmere jour- 
nal, are very appropriate : — 

" If in thine inmost soul there chance to dwell 
Aught of the poetry of human life, 
Take thou this book, and with a humble heart 
Follow these pilgrims in their joyous walk; 
And mark their high commission — not to domes 
Of pomp baronial, or gay fashion's haunts, 
Where worldlings gather ; but to rural homes, 
To cottages and hearths, where kindness dwelt, 
They bent their way ; and not a gentle breeze 
Inhaled in all their wanderings, not a flower, 
Blooming" by hedge-wayside, or mountain rill, 
But lent its inspiration, scent, and sound, 
Deepening the inward music of their hearts. 
She touched the chord, and he gave forth its tone; 
Without her he had idly gazed and dreamed, 
In fancy's region of celestial things; 
But she — by sympathy disclosed the might, 
That slumbered in his soul, and drew it thence, 
In richest numbers of subduing power, 
To soften, harmonize, and soothe mankind ; 
Nor less to elevate, and point the way 
To truth Divine — not with polemic skill, 
He sought from Nature and the human heart, 
That sacred wisdom from the fount of God." 

It has been well said that with a masculine power of 
mind Miss Wordsworth " had every womanly virtue, 
and presented with those splendid gifts such a rare 
combination, that even the enthusiastic strains in which 
her brother sang her praises borrowed no aid from his 



FURTHER INFLUENCE. 1 73 

poetic imagination. It was she who in childhood 
moderated the sternness of his moody temper, and 
she carried on the work which she had begun. His 
chief delight had been in scenes which were distin- 
guished by terror and grandeur, and she taught him 
the beauty of the simplest products and mildest graces 
of Nature ; while she was softening his mind she was 
elevating herself ; and out of this interchange of gifts 
grew an absolute harmony of thought and feeling." 
What was originally harsh in Wordsworth was toned by 
the womanly sweetness of his sister, and his spirit 
softened by her habitual delicacy of thought and act. 
Not only so, but with a devotion (I will not say self- 
sacrifice, for it was none) as rare as it is noble, she 
simply dedicated to him her life and service, living in 
and for him. She read for him, saw for him, and 
heard for him ; found subjects for his reflection, and 
was always at hand — his willing scribe. Rejecting 
for herself all thoughts of love and marriage, she gave 
to him and his her mature life as willingly and cheer- 
fully as when he was alone and unfriended, she had 
done her bright girlhood. With a mental capacity 
and literary skill, which would have enabled her to 
carve out for herself an independent reputation and 
position of no mean order, she preferred to sink her- 
self, and her future, in that of her brother, with whom 
she has thus become, for all time, so indelibly associ- 
ated. And he was grateful, and returned her devoted- 
ness with a love, tender, and almost reverential. One 
other allusion to her in his poems should be given. 
It may be thought that his praise of her is exagger- 



174 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

ated ; but none so well as he himself knew the extent 
of his obligation to her — and he was not one to be- 
stow praise for the sake only of poetic effect. Writing 
in the " Prelude," he says : — 



" Child of my parents ! Sister of my soul ! 
Thanks in sincerest verse have been elsewhere 
Poured out for all the early tenderness 
Which I from thee imbibed : and 'tis most true 
That later seasons owed to thee no less ; 
For, spite of thy sweet influence, and the touch 
Of kindred hands that opened out the springs 
Of genial thought in childhood, and in spite 
Of all that, unassisted, I had marked 
In life, or Nature, of those charms minute, 
That win their way into the heart by stealth; 
Still, to the very going out of youth, 
I too exclusively esteemed that love, 
And sought that beauty, which, as Milton sings, 
Hath terror in it. But thou didst soften down 
This over-sternness ; but for thee, dear Friend ! 
My soul, too reckless of mild grace, had stood 
Iii her original self too confident, 
Retained too long a countenance severe ; 
A rock with torrents roaring, with the clouds 
Familiar, and a favorite of the stars : 
But thou didst plant its crevices with flowers, 
Hang it with shrubs that twinkle in the breeze, 
And teach the little birds to build their nests 
And warble in its chambers. At a time 
When Nature, destined to remain so long 
Foremost in my affections, had fallen back 
Into a second place, pleased to become 
A handmaid to a nobler than herself, 
When every day brought with it some new sense 
Of exquisite regard for common things ; 



FURTHER INFLUENCE. 1 75 

And all the earth was budding with these gifts 
Of more refined humanity ; thy breath, 
Dear Sister ! was a kind of gentler spring, 
That went before my steps." 

It has, by some, been stated, in the way of objection, 
that Wordsworth was not a Christian poet, that he 
looked too exclusively to- Nature as his inspirer and 
guide, and sought from her the consolation which 
Christianity alone can afford. His friend and admirer, 
Professor Wilson, states that all his poetry, published 
previously to the " Excursion," is but the " Religion of 
the Woods " ; and that though in that poem there is a 
high religion brought forward, it is not the religion of 
Christianity. But it must be admitted that although a 
large proportion of the poetry of Wordsworth does 
not contain any specific Christian teaching, yet it 
breathes the spirit of devotion and of Christian char- 
ity. Some of the earlier poems, especially the lines 
composed at Tintern Abbey, have been referred to as 
evidence, that at the shrine of Nature alone Words- 
worth, in his earlier, and presumably wiser, years wor- 
shipped. As this subject has been more than once 
exhaustively dealt with, it is not now necessary to do 
more than mention it. It should be remembered, that 
the same pen which wrote what have been styled the 
pantheistic poems, also wrote the Ecclesiastical Son- 
nets, the Ninth Evening Voluntary, and the Thanks- 
giving Odes. What is much more needed by the heart 
of mankind than specific Christian doctrine, is the high 
and holy teaching with which the works of Wordsworth 
abound. His work was most conscientious, ever done 



176 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

under the " eye that hath kept watch o'er man's mor- 
tality." If lessons of endurance and fortitude under 
the ills and privations of life, and faith in the future, 
are needed, we have them taught us in such poems as 
that containing the story of the poor leech gatherer ; if 
storms of passion and suffering are to be allayed, we 
are reminded of "the sure relief of prayer," and the 
advice given to the Solitary to aid in the restoration of 
a lost trust and hope : 

" One adequate support 
For the calamities of mortal life 
Exists — one only: an assured belief 
That the procession of our fate, however 
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being 
Of infinite benevolence and power ; 
Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
All accidents, converting them to good. 
— The darts of anguish fix not where the seat 
Of suffering hath been thoroughly fortified 
By acquiescence in the Will supreme 
For time and for eternity by faith, 
Faith absolute in God, including hope, 
And the defence that lies in boundless love 
Of His perfections ; that habitual dread 
Of aught unworthily conceived, endured 
Impatiently, ill done, or left undone, 
To the dishonor of His holy name. 
Soul of our Souls, and safeguard of the world! 
Sustain, thou only canst, the sick of heart; 
Restore their languid spirits, and recall 
Their lost affections unto Thee and Thine ! " 

If Wordsworth and his sister in their early life seem 
to have too exclusively glorified Nature, it cannot with 



FURTHER INFLUENCE. 1 77 

any shadow of reason be said that they were at any 
period devoid of that faith and trust in the Creator 
through which we receive Nature's most beneficent 
lessons. It is, indeed, noticeable that during their 
Scottish tour no difference seems to have been made 
in the days of the week — that their Sundays were 
spent in travel. Such a thing is certainly to be re- 
gretted, which in after years probably no one would 
have been more ready than they to acknowledge. 
Thus the last entry in that journal — one made after 
an interval of many years — we find as follows : Octo- 
ber 4th, 1832. — "I find that this tour was both begun 
and ended on a Sunday. I am sorry that it should have 
been so, though I hope and trust that our thoughts and 
feelings were not seldom as pious and serious as if we 
had duly attended a place devoted to public worship. 
My sentiments have undergone a great change since 
1803 respecting the absolute necessity of keeping the 
Sabbath by a regular attendance at church. — D. W." 
It cannot be doubted that the feeling which dictated 
those words marks a distinct advance. I doubt not that 
Miss Wordsworth was able to worship the Creator as 
devoutly on the green slope of a sun-crowned mountain 
or in the solemn woods, murmuring their eternal mys- 
terious secrets, as in the public assembly of saints. 
And such would be in accord with the glow of youth- 
ful life with which she bounded to greet Nature's 
subtle influences. But a longer experience brought 
its inevitable sobering tendencies, accompanied by the 
longing for a closer approach towards the Infinite 
which is felt by all searching and great souls. Words- 



178 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

worth could truly say, in view of his work, that it was a 
consolation to him to feel that he had never written a 
line which he could wish to blot. To this happy and 
rare result his sister contributed. Remembering the 
exalted character of that work, there is no other con- 
clusion than that she had no mean part in a work, 
the issues of which were beneficial not only for time — 
adding to the sweet influences and graces of life — but 
will be far-reaching as eternity. 

In illustration of Miss Wordsworth's own literary 
style, I take the liberty to insert in later chapters a few 
poems which have been deemed worthy to have a place 
with those of her brother, as well as a journal of a tour 
on Ullswater. What most in her journals arrests the 
attention is her unusual quickness and minuteness of 
observation, combined with a graceful and poetic dic- 
tion. With her ardent love of Nature, nothing seems 
to have escaped her notice ; and all the varying shades 
of beauty in earth and sky, which, to the observant eye 
and loving heart, invest with such a glory this old world, 
were duly appreciated. Describing a birch tree, she 
says : " As we went along we were stopped at once, at 
a distance of, perhaps, fifty yards from our favorite 
birch tree. It was yielding to a gust of wind, with all 
its tender twigs ; the sun shone upon it, and it glanced 
in the wind like a flying sunshiny shower. It was a 
tree in shape, with stem and branches ; but it was like 
a spirit of water." Noticing a number of daffodils 
near Ullswater, she writes : " When we were in the 
woods below Gowbarrow Park we saw a few daffodils 
close to the water side. As we went along there were 



FURTHER INFLUENCE. 1 79 

more and yet more ; and at last, under the boughs of 
the trees, we saw there was a long belt of them along 
the shore. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They 
grew among the mossy stones about them. Some 
rested their heads on these stones as on a pillow ; the 
rest tossed, and reeled, and danced, and seemed as 
if they verily laughed with the wind, they looked so 
gay and glancing." These daffodils suggested to her 
brother one of the most beautiful of his short poems, 
that which has been previously quoted, commencing 

" I wandered lonely as a cloud." 

Of this description of Miss Wordsworth Mr. Lock- 
hart says : " Few poets ever lived who could have 
written a description so simple and original, so vivid 
and picturesque. Her words are scenes, and some- 
thing more." 

Miss Wordsworth was for many years a great cor- 
respondent, and it is to be regretted that more of her 
letters have not been given to the world. From those 
quoted in this volume it will be seen that they exhibit 
the same fluent, graceful, and animated style which 
characterized all her productions. 



" I have seen 
That reverent form bowed down with age and pain, 
And rankling malady. Yet not for this 
Ceased she to praise her Maker, or withdraw 
Her trust in Him, her faith, and humble hope; 
So meekly had she learnt to bear her cross — 
For she had studied patience in the school 
Of Christ ; much comfort she had thence derived, 
And was a follower of the Nazarene." Lamb. 

" So fails, so languishes, grows dim and dies, 
All that the world is proud of." 

181 



ILLNESS AND LAST YEARS. 1 83 



CHAPTER XVI. 

ILLNESS AND LAST YEARS. 

REFERENCE must now be made, however reluc- 
tantly, to the sad illness with which Miss Words- 
worth was more or less afflicted for over twenty years. 
At this distance of time particulars as to the com- 
mencement and progress of this affliction are not easily 
procurable. It appears, however, to have been about 
the year 1826 that her splendid physical energies began 
to show signs of decay. In October of that year Mr. 
Crabb Robinson, after mentioning a visit to Southey 
at Keswick, wrote in his diary : " Miss D. Words- 
worth's illness prevented me going to Rydal Mount." 
From this illness it is, however, evident she success- 
fully rallied. I am indebted to Notes and Queries for 
the following extract from a letter by Miss Dora 
Wordsworth, dated 1st February, 1827 : "Aunt Words- 
worth has not yet walked herself to death, which I 
often tell her she will do, though she still continues 
the same tremendous pedestrian." Here we have the 
key to the cause of her subsequent prostration. From 
her ardent and impassioned nature her career had 
been what may be termed singularly intense. De 
Quincey, who knew her well, speaks of there being 



1 84 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

clearly observable in her " a self-consuming style of 
thought." Both as regards her mental and physical 
nature, she appears to have run a race with time. As 
her brother's companion, she had indeed been so ex- 
clusively and passionately devoted to him as to identify 
herself not only with his mental pursuits, but also, 
probably more than wisely, with his long pedestrian 
and mountain rambles. If it were not that the great 
work of her life was so signally achieved, and her satis- 
faction therein abundant, we should be inclined to 
regret that she thus drew an over-draft on the foun- 
tains of her life. It could not be expected that her 
frailer frame could sustain, without any mischievous 
effects, the physical fatigues and labors of her more 
robust brother; for with him she was ever ready to 
explore the mountain force, to climb the rocky 
heights, or walk over moor and fell apparently almost 
regardless of distance. Within due limits, no doubt 
all this is as healthful as it is delightful. But Nature's 
powers are limited ; and Nature in Miss Wordsworth 
eventually gave way. And her spirits suffered in sym- 
pathy with her physical nature. 

As an illustration of Miss Wordsworth's home ram- 
bles and adventures, I may here mention a reminis- 
cence which is given by Mr. Justice Coleridge, of an 
excursion made with Wordsworth into Easedale. The 
poet, pointing to a precipitous and rocky mountain 
above the tarn, told of an incident which befell him 
and his sister on one occasion on their coming over 
the mountains from Langdale. From some cause they 
had become a little parted, when a heavy fog came on 



ILLNESS AND LAST YEARS. 1 85 

and Miss Wordsworth became bewildered. After wan- 
dering about for some time she sat down and waited. 
When the fog cleared away and she could see the 
valley before her, she found that she had stopped very 
providentially, as she was standing almost on the 
verge of the precipice. 

It is not, however, to be supposed that Miss Words- 
worth accompanied her brother over the 200,000 miles 
which De Quincey calculated the poet must have 
walked, nor is it stated by what means the figures are 
arrived at ! A twenty or thirty miles walk was not 
an uncommon thing. As an instance, I find it stated 
that one summer afternoon, as the Keswick coach was 
approaching Grasmere, it met Wordsworth, and 
stopped. A lady, who was going on a visit to the 
poet, put out her head to speak to him, whereupon he 
said to her : " How d'ye do ? Mrs. Wordsworth will 
be delighted to see you. I shall be back in the even- 
ing. I'm only going to tea with Southey," who, it 
will be remembered, lived at a distance of about fifteen 
miles, and the road by no means a good one. 

It is stated by Principal Shairp, in the introduction 
to the " Tour in Scotland," that in the year 1829 Miss 
Wordsworth " was seized with a severe illness, which 
so prostrated her, body and mind, that she never re- 
covered from it." This can, however, hardly be the 
fact, as is evidenced by the following letter to Mr. 
Crabb Robinson, which certainly shows no indication 
of mental prostration, and contains no allusion to a 
physical one : — 



1 86 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

" Friday, Dec. ist, 1831. 

" Had a rumor of your arrival in England reached us be- 
fore your letter of yesterday's post you would ere this have 
received a welcome from me, in the name of each member of 
this family; and, further, would have been reminded of your 
promise to come to Rydal as soon as possible after again set- 
ting foot on English ground. When Dora heard of your re- 
turn, and of my intention to write, she exclaimed after a charge 
that I would recall to your mind your written promise : ' He 
must come and spend Christmas with us. I wish he would ! ' 
Thus you see, notwithstanding your petty jarrings, Dora was 
always, and now is, a loving friend of yours. I am sure I need 
not add that if you can come at the time mentioned, so much 
the more agreeable to us all, for it is fast approaching; but 
that %vJienever it suits you (for you may have Christmas engage- 
ments with your own family) to travel so far northward, we 
shall be rejoiced to see you; and whatever other visitors we 
may chance to have, we shall always be able to find a corner 
for you. We are thankful that you are returned with health 
unimpaired — I may say, indeed, amended — for you were not 
perfectly well when you left England. You do not mention 
rheumatic pains, so I trust they have entirely left you. As to 
your being grown older — if you mean feebler in mind — my 
brother says, ' No such thing ; your judgment has only attained 
autumnal ripeness.' Indeed, my dear friend, I wonder not at 
your alarms, or those of any good man, whatever may have 
been his politics from youth to middle age, and onward to the de- 
cline of life. But I will not enter upon this sad and perplexing 
subject. I find it much more easy to look with patience on the 
approach of pestilence, or any affliction which it may please 
God to cast upon us without the intervention of man, than on 
the dreadful results of sudden and rash changes, whether aris- 
ing from ambition, or ignorance, or brute force. I am, however, 
getting into the subject without intending it, so will conclude 
with a prayer that God may enlighten the heads and hearts of 
our men of power, whether Whigs or Tories, and that the mad- 
ness of the deluded people may settle. This last effect can only 



ILLNESS AND LAST YEARS. 1 87 

be produced, I fear, by exactly and severely executing the law, 
seeking out and punishing the guilty, and letting all persons 
see that we do not willingly oppress the poor. One possible 
blessing seems already to be coming upon us through the alarm 
of the cholera. Every rich man is now obliged to look into 
the by-lanes and corners inhabited by the poor, and many 
crying abuses are (even in our little town of Ambleside) about 
to be remedied. 

" But to return to pleasant Rydal Mount, still cheerful and 
peaceful — if it were not for the newspapers we should know 
nothing of the turbulence of our great towns and cities ; yet my 
poor brother is often heart-sick and almost desponding — and 
no wonder, for, until this point at which we are arrived, he 
has been a true prophet as to the course of events, dating from 
the ' Great Days of July ' and the appearance of ' the Bill, the 
whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill.' It remains for us to 
hope that now Parliament may meet in a different temper from 
that in which they parted, and that the late dreadful events 
may make each man seek only to promote the peace and pros- 
perity of the country. You will see that my brother looks 
older. He is certainly thinner, and has lost some of his teeth ; 
but his bodily activity is not at all diminished, and if it were 
not for public affairs, his spirits would be as cheerful as ever. 
He and Dora visited Sir Walter Scott just before his depart- 
ure, and made a little tour in the Western Highlands ; and 
such was his leaning to old pedestrian habits, that he often 
walked from fifteen to twenty miles in a day, following or 
keeping by the side of the little carriage, of which his daughter 
was the charioteer. They both very much enjoyed the tour, 
and my brother actually brought home a set of poems, the 
product of that journey. . . ." 

It was not, however, long after the date of this 
letter, which shows that Miss Wordsworth was still in 
possession of her vigorous and clear intellect, that she 
was seized with a more severe illness. Her growing 



1 88 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

weakness was, in the year 1832, accompanied by an 
alarming attack of brain fever, from the effects of 
which she never altogether recovered. Mr. Myers 
states that the illness " kept her for many months in a 
state of great prostration, and left her, when the phys- 
ical symptoms abated, with her intellect painfully 
impaired, and her bright nature permanently over- 
clouded." 

In June, 1833, Mr. Crabb Robinson again writes in 
his diary : " Strolled up to Rydal Mount, where I met 
with a cordial reception from my kind friends ; but 
Miss Wordsworth I did not see. I spent a few hours 
very delightfully, and enjoyed the improved walk in 
Mr. Wordsworth's garden, from which the views are 
admirable, and had most agreeable conversation, with 
no other drawback than Miss Wordsworth's absence 
from the state of her health." 

Wordsworth himself felt very keenly the affliction 
of his sister. Writing to his brother, the Rev. Dr. 
Wordsworth, on April 1, 1832, he says: "Our dear 
sister makes no progress towards recovery of strength. 
She is very feeble, never quits her room, and passes 
most of the day in, or upon, the bed. She does not 
suffer much pain, and is very cheerful, and nothing 
troubles her but public affairs and the sense of requir- 
ing so much attention. Whatever may be the close 
of this illness, it will be a profound consolation to you, 
my dear brother, and to us all, that it is borne with 
perfect resignation ; and that her thoughts are such as 
the good and pious would wish. She reads much, 
both religious and miscellaneous works." On June 25 



ILLNESS AND LAST YEARS. 1 89 

of the same year, writing to Professor Hamilton, after 
referring to Coleridge, he says : " He and my beloved 
sister are the two beings to whom my intellect is most 
indebted, and they are now proceeding, as it were, 
pari passu, along the path of sickness, I will not say 
towards the grave ; but I trust towards a blessed 
immortality." 

It does' not, however, appear that all hope was 
abandoned of Miss Wordsworth's recovery until the 
year 1836. In a note of his life dictated by the poet, 
after referring to the deaths of his two young children 
in 181 2, he says: "We lived with no further sorrow 
till 1836, when my sister became a confirmed invalid." 

The outward life of Miss Wordsworth was now at 
an end. Her condition became such that those who 
loved her so dearly could only hope to relieve her 
pain and cheer her lonely hours. The buoyancy of 
spirit and activity of limb which had so distinguished 
her young and mature life ceased — had gradually 
given way to a decay of her physical energies, which 
was accompanied at times, and especially during her 
later years, by a consequent natural depression of 
spirit, or loss of mental elasticity. As years passed, 
what may be called the symptoms of mental decay 
became intensified. I am, however, inclined to think 
that by some writers too much prominence has been 
given to the deterioration of her intellect. Principal 
Shairp says : " It is sad to think that when the world at 
last knew him (Wordsworth) for what he was, the 
great original poet of the century, she who had helped 
to make him so was almost past rejoicing in it." Mr. 



1 90 D OR O THY WORDS WOR TH. 

Howitt, writing while Miss Wordsworth was still living, 
said : "The mind of that beloved sister has for many- 
years gone, as it were, before her, and she lives on in 
a second infancy, gratefully cherished in the poet's 
home." 

The condition into which Miss Wordsworth had 
declined is not, however, an unusual one when a 
severe and protracted illness lays hold upon one ad- 
vancing in years. The "nervous depression" or " ner- 
vous irritation " which clouded her later years, apart 
from the prostration of the body, was most manifest in 
the lapse of memory, which is frequently the case with 
those who have not, indeed, suffered the affliction of 
Miss Wordsworth. Her physical frame having suc- 
cumbed to the overtaxing of her energies, as an almost 
natural consequence her mind lost its youthful buoy- 
ancy and brightness, and suffered in sympathy. An 
aged inhabitant of the district, who knew her from 
youth to age, a little time ago informed me that she 
could not be called low-spirited, but that she became 
" a bit dull," adding that she always knew people, and 
was able to converse with them. 

Meanwhile, in the poet's home and circle, the inevi- 
table flight of time was bringing about other changes 
which tended to sadden the age of its inhabitants. 
Intimate friends were departing. Coleridge, the friend 
of his youth, who had, as before mentioned, left the 
district, and been resident in London, died in 1834, 
to be followed to the grave only a month later by the 
friend of both, the genial-hearted Charles Lamb. In 
1835, also, to add to the sorrow caused by the con- 



ILLNESS AND LAST YEARS. 191 

firmed affliction of Miss Wordsworth, the beloved 
sister of Mrs. Wordsworth, Miss Sarah Hutchinson, 
who had for many years alternately resided with them 
and her brother at Brinsop Court, Hereford, was added 
to the number of the loved and lost. 

The year 1841 was brightened by the marriage of 
Miss Dora Wordsworth, the only surviving daughter 
of the poet. The event was not, however, to him one 
of unalloyed happiness. This daughter, having, for 
now some years, grown up to bright and happy woman- 
hood, was his cherished companion, and in her his 
heart seemed to be bound up. She occupied in his 
later poems, to some extent, the same position that 
his sister did in his earlier. Mr. Edward Quillinan, 
who became the poet's son-in-law, was a gentleman 
of much literary culture and attainment. He was the 
author of several poems, reviews, and other works, and 
had the reputation of being the most accomplished 
Portuguese scholar in this country. He was an officer 
in the Dragoon Guards, and had married for his first 
wife a daughter of Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart. Long 
an admirer of Wordsworth, he had become personally 
acquainted with him while his regiment was stationed 
in Penrith in 1820. Quitting the service in 182 1 he 
settled at the village of Rydal, chiefly for the sake of 
the poet's society. Here he had in the following year 
the misfortune to lose his wife. Notwithstanding the 
close friendship which existed between them, Words- 
worth did not like the idea of losing the companion- 
ship of his daughter. Sir Henry Taylor, in reference 
to this, says : " His love for his only daughter was 



I92 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

passionately jealous, and the marriage which was indis- 
pensable to her peace and happiness was intolerable 
to his feelings. The emotions — I may say the throes 
and agonies of emotion — he underwent were such as 
an old man could not have endured without suffering 
in health, had he not been a very strong old man. But 
he was like nobody else — old or young. He would 
pass the night, or most part of it, in struggles and 
storms, to the moment of coming down to breakfast ; 
and then, if strangers were present, be as easy and 
delightful in conversation as if nothing was the matter. 
But if his own health did not suffer, his daughter's did, 
and this consequence of his resistance, mainly aided, 
I believe, by the temperate but persistent pressure 
exercised by Miss Fenwick, brought him at length, 
though far too tardily, to consent to the marriage." 

The marriage took place in Bath, in May, 1841 ; 
and afterwards Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth and Miss 
Fenwick made a short tour to Alfoxden and other 
places so closely associated with the early life of 
Wordsworth and his sister. Writing to Sir H. Taylor, 
Miss Fenwick says : — " We had two perfect days for 
our visit to Wells, Alfoxden, &c. They were worthy 
of a page or two in the poet's life. Forty-two years, 
perhaps, never passed over any human head with more 
gain and less loss than over his. There he was again, 
after that long period, in the full vigor of his intellect, 
and with all the fervent feelings which have accom- 
panied him through life ; his bodily strength little im- 
paired, he, gray-headed, with an old wife and not a 
young daughter. The thought of what his sister, who 



ILLNESS AND LAST YEARS. 1 93 

had been his companion here, was then, and now is, 
seemed the only painful feeling that moved in his 
mind. He was delighted to see again those scenes 
(and they were beautiful in their kind) where he had 
been so happy — where he had felt and thought so 
much. He pointed out the spots where he had written 
so many of his early poems, and told us how they had 
been suggested." 

It was on the death of Southey, in 1843, that Words- 
worth, then in his seventy-fourth year, was offered, and, 
after some hesitation, on account of his age, accepted 
the appointment of Poet Laureate — an office which 
has not been filled by a worthier man or greater poet. 

But other trials were in store for his advancing years. 
The health of his daughter had for some years been 
delicate, and continued to be so after her marriage. 
In 1845 Mr. and Mrs. Quillinan sought the more 
genial clime of Spain and Portugal, where they re- 
mained until the summer of the following year. Of 
this tour Mrs. Quillinan published a journal, of which 
it has been said that it showed she " inherited no 
trivial measure of her aunt's tastes and talents." It 
was hoped that by this means her health had been 
restored ; but the hope proved to be short-lived. 
She gradually faded, and, to the great grief of all who 
knew her, died in 1847. The effect on the poet was 
most saddening. Sir Henry Taylor, referring to his 
cultivation of the muse in later years, says : " At his 
daughter's death, a silence, as of death, fell upon him ; 
and though during the interval between her death and 
his own his genius was not at all times incapable of 



194 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

its old animation, I believe it never broke again into 
song." 

To return to Miss Wordsworth. Mr. Crabb Robin- 
son, in a reminiscence of the year 1835, writes : "Al- 
ready her health had broken down. In her youth and 
middle age she had stood in somewhat the same rela- 
tion to her brother William as poor Mary Lamb to her 
brother Charles. In her long illness she was fond of 
repeating the favorite small poems of her brother, as 
well as a few of her own. And this she did in so sweet 
a tone as to be quite pathetic. The temporary obscura- 
tions of a noble mind can never obliterate the recol- 
lections of its inherent and essential worth." 

In December, 1843, Mr. Quillinan, writing to Mrs. 
Clarkson, refers to the pleasure with which they at 
Rydal had read Miss Martineau's " Life in a Sick 
Room," and adds : " When I said all the Rydalites, 
I should have excepted poor, dear Miss Wordsworth, 
who could not bear sustained attention to any book, 
but who would be quite capable of appreciating a little 
at a time." In a still later letter — one from Mr. 
Robinson to Miss Fenwick, in 1849 — referring to a 
visit paid to his friends at Rydal, he says : " Poor Miss 
Wordsworth I found sunk still further in insensibility. 
By the by, Mrs. Wordsworth says that almost the 
only enjoyment Wordsworth seems to feel is in his 
attendance on her, and that her death would be to 
him a sad calamity." Lady Richardson has given the 
following pathetic reminiscence : "There is," she says, 
" always something very touching in his way of speak- 
ing of his sister. The tones of his voice become very 



ILLNESS AND LAST YEARS. 1 95 

gentle and solemn, and he ceases to have that flow of 
expression, which is so remarkable in him in all other 
subjects. It is as if the sadness connected with her 
present condition was too much for him to dwell upon 
in connection with the past, although habit and the 
omnipotence of circumstances have made its daily- 
presence less oppressive to his spirits. He said that 
his sister spoke constantly of their early days, but more 
of the years they spent together in other parts of Eng- 
land than those at Grasmere." 

To Miss Wordsworth the "sorrow's crown of sorrow " 
came with the death in April, 1850, of the brother for 
whom she had lived and for whom she had done so 
much. Having attained his eightieth year, he caught 
a cold, which resulted in a bronchial attack. After 
lying for a few weeks in a state of exhaustion, the great 
soul passed to its everlasting rest, to swell the song of 
the eternal world. 

Although cared for and dearly beloved by the sur- 
vivors, the death of her brother seemed to snap the 
strong tie by which she was bound to life. In conse- 
quence of being herself confined to her room, she was 
not able to witness the progress and end of her brother's 
illness. To the very last they had been so completely 
devoted to each other that when his death was com- 
municated to her she was at first unable to realize it. 
When the truth at length dawned upon her, she gave 
utterance to the pathetic exclamation, that there was 
nothing left worth living for. 

Miss Wordsworth, however, survived her brother by 
nearly five years. It is a satisfaction to know that even 



I96 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

her latest years were not without gleams of brightness. 
Although, compared with her early mental vigor, there 
was visible a melancholy wreck of mind, it was chiefly 
the result of an uncertain and vanishing memory. She 
had, indeed, to the very last perfectly lucid intervals 
during which she was remarkably clear and quite her- 
self. As a not uncommon result of loss of memory in 
aged people, she forgot near events, and was what 
might be termed somewhat childish. She could 
remember quite well what took place in her girlhood, 
while if asked what she had been doing or talking about 
an hour previously she would have no recollection of it. 

During her latest years Miss Wordsworth was unable 
to read much, but would frequently amuse herself by 
reciting poetry and other scraps, which, learnt in pre- 
vious years, she remembered wonderfully well. A 
casual observer, who might see the placid old lady, 
of fourscore years, wheeled on the terrace at Rydal 
Mount, her unwrinkled though somewhat pensive face 
framed by a full-bordered cap, would have no sugges- 
tion of the often vacant mind. 

Although sometimes considerably depressed in spirits, 
her tedious affliction was, on the whole, borne with 
exemplary Christian fortitude. It has been said that 
" her loving-kindness in health had known no bounds, 
and the sympathy she had ever felt for the sorrows of 
others was now rivalled by the patience with which she 
bore her own." 

When the end at length came it was calm and 
tolerably painless. Taking cold early in the year 1855, 
her condition was aggravated by an attack of bron- 



ILLNESS AND LAST YEARS. 1 97 

chitis, and her spirit left the worn-out frame on the 
25th of January, in her eighty-third year. 

Her remains were deposited in the peaceful church- 
yard of Grasmere, by the murmuring waters of a 
mountain stream, the same sacred spot of earth which 
contained those of her beloved brother, overshadowed 
by the same yew trees. 

It was from her own choice — a choice decided and 
happy — that Miss Wordsworth was never married. 
De Quincey (who seems, by the way, to have had a 
pretty universal knowledge) informs us that she had 
several offers of marriage, and amongst them, to his 
knowledge, one from Hazlitt, all of which she deci- 
sively rejected. Although he speaks so confidently, 
it is probable that, with regard to Hazlitt, he was 
mistaken. With the exception of a visit to Nether 
Stowey, and a short stay in the Lake district some few 
years later, it does not appear that Hazlitt was brought 
into contact with the Wordsworths, or that the rela- 
tions between them were at all familiar ; and Hazlitt's 
grandson and biographer does not attach much impor- 
tance to the statement. Miss Wordsworth had a far 
higher vocation. Her sacrifice, if it can be so called, 
to her brother was complete ; but her lot was not, 
therefore, less happy. Doubtless the duties of mar- 
riage and maternity, had the poet's prophecy concern- 
ing her been fulfilled, would have filled her life, in its 
maturity and decline, with cares and interests which 
would have contributed to the keeping of her mind in 
a condition of more continuous mental vigor and equi- 
poise. But the one great object of her life had been 



I98 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

accomplished. She had lived to know all slander and 
rancor, the effect of all spiteful reviews, lived down ; 
and — if not able fully to appreciate and rejoice in the 
fact — to see her brother, whom she had helped so 
much to perfect, universally acknowledged as a master 
of English song, occupying a foremost niche in the 
Temple of Fame — the greatest poet, since Milton. 

And, although her old age was somewhat over- 
clouded, it cannot be considered altogether sad ; and 
it is not with thoughts of sadness that our reflections 
on such a beneficent career as hers should be closed. 

If the latter portion of her life was overshadowed 
with gloom and sickness ; if the brightness of the 
morning and the serenity of noonday too early gave 
place to a long twilight upon which the shadows fell 
heavily, her bright and lucid intervals give abundant 
hope that gleams of gladness revisited the mind which, 
for so long, had been a " mansion for all lovely forms " 
treasured and garnered in her early years. 

It is more befitting that we should turn away our 
thoughts from the intervening period of age and decay ; 
and that Dorothy Wordsworth should live in our minds 
as she was in her eager-spirited and ardent youth, when 
in company with her beloved companion, she bounded 
over the familiar hills and roamed by the mountain 
streams, or by the household fire scanned the classic 
page — a youth of beauty, and buoyancy, and joy, be- 
cause so full of love and goodness, of generous sympathy 
and unselfish devotion — a youth which she has since 
renewed, unclouded by any shade, in the same old so- 
ciety, and with the familiar love re-linked — in Paradiso. 



A QUIET RESTING-PLACE, 1 99 



A 



CHAPTER XVII. 

A QUIET RESTING-PLACE. 

FEW words only are desirable to be added in 
reference to the surviving inmate of the home 
of which Miss Wordsworth was so long a cherished 
member. The poet's aged widow survived her hus- 
band and sister-in-law for some years. She was not 
solitary in her widowhood, but tenderly loved by 
devoted friends. Miss Joanna Baillie, writing to Mrs. 
Fletcher in the June succeeding the death of Words- 
worth, says : " Many thanks to you for sending to us 
a copy of these lines " (the lines upon the companion- 
ship of Wordsworth and his sister, before mentioned), 
" and for letting us know how his excellent wife, Mrs. 
Wordsworth, bears up under her severe affliction. She 
was a mate worthy of him or any man, and his sister 
too, such a devoted noble being as scarcely any other 
man ever possessed." 

Mrs. Fletcher's diary, under date, Sunday, the 7th 
May, 1854, contains the following entry: " Yesterday, 
Mrs. Davy brought Mrs. Wordsworth to dinner. It 
is always a pleasure to see the placid old age of dear 
Mrs. Wordsworth. Hers has been a life of duty, and 
it is now an old age of repose, while her affections are 



200 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

kept in constant exercise by the tender interest she 
takes in her grand-children." 

During the last three years of her life Mrs. Words- 
worth was blind ; and it is deeply pathetic to read 
how, in her last days, when her sightless eyes could no 
longer peruse the sacred page, she loved to feel with 
her trembling fingers a cross which she kept in her 
room, and which seemed to remind her of the Chris- 
tian's hope. Her life of calm devotion and disinter- 
ested love, succeeded by an old age of resignation and 
peace, was brought to a serene close on the 1 7th of 
January, 1859. 

Among the quiet resting-places of the dead, few, if 
any, are of deeper interest than the peaceful church- 
yard of Grasmere. Under the shadow of the ever- 
lasting hills " girded with joy," and by the banks of 
the murmuring stream singing in its onward course of 
hopes beyond the grave, it is a spot which affection 
would choose for its most tenderly loved. As " the 
Churchyard among the mountains," many of the annals 
of which are recorded in that grand philosophic poem, 
"The Excursion," it could not fail to draw thither the 
footsteps of the thoughtful. But there is one corner 
on approaching which we seem to feel more solem- 
nized, to breathe more gently — where the footstep falls 
lighter and lingers longer. To us it is as sacred a nook 
as the shadowy corner of the famous Abbey where are 
laid England's greatest sons. The group of graves 
gathered there are not glorified by the " religious 
light " of storied windows, but they are warmed by 
summer suns, and covered with a garment of purity 



A QUIET RESTING-PLACE. 201 

by winter snows, and over- shadowed by aged yews, 
which gently shower around them their peaceful and 
slumberous undersong. 

In the south-east corner of this quiet God's Acre is 
to be found this cluster of graves, surrounded by an 
iron palisade, to each of which a history of more than 
common interest is attached. Behind the principal 
group are three short graves, two of which, being the 
first formed of the group, attract attention. These 
are the graves of little Catherine and Thomas Words- 
worth, the children of the poet, whose early and sudden 
deaths have been mentioned. The stone indicating 
the resting-place of the " loving, and tractable, though 
wild," Catherine bears the inscription, " Suffer little 
children to come unto Me." That of her brother con- 
tains a few memorial lines recording at once his age 
and loving disposition : — 

" Six months to six years added he remained 
Upon this sinful earth, by sin unstained : 
O blessed Lord ! Whose mercy then removed 
A Child whom every eye that looked on loved ; 
Support us, teach us calmly to resign 
What we possessed, and now is wholly Thine ! " 

The next green mound, in point of date, is that 
which covers the remains of the first Mrs. Quillinan, 
who died on the 25th May, 1822, at the early age of 
twenty-seven years, six months after the birth of her 
second daughter. She was a daughter of the late Sir 
Egerton Brydges, Bart., of Denton Court, near Dover. 
There is in Grasmere Church a monument to her 
designed by Sir F. Chantrey. 



202 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

Miss Sarah Hutchinson, the younger sister of Mrs. 
Wordsworth, who has been before mentioned, comes 
next in this remarkable group. Spending, as she did, 
much of her time with the Wordsworths at Grasmere 
and Rydal Mount, she was devoted to all the members 
of the family. Being herself of poetic mould, the 
poet's home was most congenial to her. It was she, 
who, during a sickness, the year before her death, 
wrote the following lines to the Redbreast : — 

" Stay, cheerful little Robin ! stay, 
And at my casement sing, 
Though it should prove a farewell lay 
And this our parting spring. 

" Though I, alas ! may ne'er enjoy 
The promise in thy song ; 
A charm, that thought cannot destroy, 
Doth to thy strain belong. 

" Methinks that in my dying hour 
Thy song would still be dear, 
And with a more than earthly power 
My passing Spirit cheer. 

"Then, little Bird, this boon confer, 
Come, and my requiem sing, 
Nor fail to be the harbinger 
Of everlasting Spring." 

She died as before-mentioned in 1835. Her memo- 
rial stone states that she was the beloved sister and 
faithful friend of mourners, who had caused the stone 
to be erected, with the earnest wish that their remains 
might be laid by her side, and a humble hope that 
through Christ they might together be made partakers 



A QUIET RESTING-PLACE. 203 

of the same blessed resurrection. Twelve years after- 
wards the sod was again cut, to receive, not yet the 
aged poet or his wife, but their idolized daughter 
Dora, the devoted wife of Mr. Quillinan, who, in her 
forty-third year, after a brief period of wedded happi- 
ness, died on the 9th July, 1847. Upon the stone at 
the head of her grave is chiselled a lamb bearing a 
cross, and the consolatory words : " Him that cometh 
unto Me I will in no wise cast out." 

The poet himself was the next to be added to the 
group, and the slab, with the simple inscription 
" William Wordsworth, 1850," has been gazed upon 
by as many moistened eyes as the elaborate tombs of 
any of England's greatest heroes. 

Mr. Edward Quillinan, who died in July, 1851, rests 
near the two beloved companions of his life. 

The subject of this brief memoir — the most per- 
fect sister the world hath known — after her sunny 
youth, her strong maturity, and her afflicted age, now 
sleeps in peace on the right side of the poet, to whom 
her self-denying life was devoted, her resting-place, to 
all who have heard her name being sufficiently 
indicated by the words 

"Dorothy Wordsworth, 

1855-" 

In a few years more the poet's grave received to its 
shelter the tried and honored partner of his long life, 
and the words were added : " Mary Wordsworth, 

1859." 



204 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

From this time there is a break of many years, when 
the enclosure received another member of the younger 
generation. Miss Rotha Quillinan, named after the 
murmuring river, by the banks of which her life was 
spent, died on the ist February, 1876. She was the 
younger daughter of Mr. Quillinan, and, apart from 
the subsequent relationship, had been an object of 
especial interest to the poet as his god-daughter. He 
wrote the following lines in her album : — 

"Rotha, my Spiritual Child! this head was gray 
When at the sacred font for thee I stood : 
Pledged till thou reach the verge of womanhood, 
And shalt become thy own sufficient stay; 
Too late, I feel, sweet Orphan! was the day 
For steadfast hope the contract to fulfil ; 
Yet shall my blessing hover o'er thee still, 
Embodied in the music of this Lay, 
Breathed forth beside the peaceful mountain Stream, 
Whose murmur soothed thy languid Mother's ear 
After her throes, this Stream of name more dear 
Since thou dost bear it — a memorial theme 
For others ; for thy future self, a spell 
To summon fancies out of Time's dark cell." 

Her surviving sister still resides in the charming 
retreat at the foot of Loughrigg Fell, overlooking the 
vale of Ambleside, which had so long been the home 
of both. 

The latest addition to the group was made so lately 
as the year 1883, when Mr. William Wordsworth, the 
last surviving son of the poet, was added to the 
number. 



A QUIET RESTING-PLACE. 205 

There is, however, one more grave, which, though 
not within the enclosure, lies close behind it, and 
claims our notice. Hartley Coleridge, the eldest son 
of his more distinguished father, was for many years 
a familiar figure in the neighborhood where he now 
rests. As a child, quiet, intelligent, and promising; 
as a youth, encouraging the hope that he was gifted 
with a genius which would lead to a career of no 
ordinary character ; as a collegian, fulfilling the bright 
hopes of his friends, and attaining signal distinction ; 
— his subsequent history affords one more instance 
of the fact that the greatest genius may by one failing 
be crippled, and the brightest promise be never fol- 
lowed by its full fruition. But this is not the place to 
recount his story. His published poems show that he 
inherited no small portion of his father's poetic ability. 
In his subsequently rather aimless life, he endeared 
himself not a little to the sympathetic inhabitants of 
the vale by his gentle, warm-hearted, and loving dis- 
position. He was passionately fond of children, and 
would hardly pass through the village without taking 
a little one into his arms. For his father's sake, as 
well as his own, he was a favorite with the Words- 
worths. It was by Mrs. Wordsworth, the friend of 
his infancy, that in his fifty-third year his relatives 
were summoned to his dying bed ; and by Words- 
worth himself (a year before his own death) his last 
resting-place was chosen. " Let him lie by us," said 
the aged poet, " he would have wished it ; " adding 
to the sexton, " keep the ground for us — we are old 
people, and it cannot be for long." 



206 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

The following sonnet may be given as a specimen 
of Hartley Coleridge's poetry, the closing line not 
inaptly expressing the prayerful attitude with which 
he approached the eternal future. 

"SHE LOVED MUCH. 

" She sat and wept beside His feet. The weight 
Of sin oppressed her heart; for all the blame, 
And the poor malice of the worldly shame, 
To her was past, extinct, and out of date ; 
Only the sin remained — the leprous state. 
She would be melted by the heat of love, 
By fires far fiercer than are blown to prove 
And purge the silver ore adulterate. 
She sat and wept, and with her untressed hair 
Still wiped the feet she was so blest to touch; 
And He wiped off the soiling of despair 
From her sweet soul, because she loved so much. 
I am a sinner, full of doubts and fears, 
Make me a humble thing of love and tears." 



POEMS. 207 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

POEMS. 

MISS WORDSWORTH did not write much poetry. 
The few pieces she has left behind, though not 
of the highest order, are sufficient to show that had 
she devoted herself to it, she might have attained 
distinction. She was so devoted to her brother that 
she did not attempt for herself an independent posi- 
tion. She preferred to find subjects for the more 
skilful pen of her brother, and to act as his amanu- 
ensis. The poems that she did write, and which have 
been published with those of her brother, are worthy 
of a place here. The first of these, written in 1805, 
is — 

"THE COTTAGER TO HER INFANT. 

(Suggested to Miss Wordsworth when watching one of the Poefs 

Children!) 

" The days are cold, the nights are long, 
The north wind sings a doleful song ; 
Then hush again upon my breast ; 
All merry things are now at rest, 
Save thee, my pretty Love ! 

"The kitten sleeps upon the hearth, 
The crickets long have ceased their mirth : 



208 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

There's nothing stirring in the house 
Save one wee, hungry, nibbling mouse, 
Then why so busy thou ? 

" Nay ! start not at that sparkling light ; 
'Tis but the moon that shines so bright 
On the window pane, bedropped with rain 
Then, little Darling ! sleep again, 
And wake when it is day." 



The following (written in 1806) has been described 
by Charles Lamb as masterly : — 



"ADDRESSED TO A CHILD (DURING A BOIS- 
TEROUS WINTER EVENING). 

" What way does the Wind come ? What way does he go ? 
He rides over the water, and over the snow; 
Through wood and through vale ; and o'er rocky height 
Which the goat cannot climb, takes his sounding flight; 
He tosses about in every bare tree, 
As, if you look up, you plainly may see ; 
But how he will come, and whither he goes, 
There's never a scholar in England knows. 
He will suddenly stop in a cunning nook, 
And ring a sharp 'larum ; — but, if you should look, 
There's nothing to see but a cushion of snow 
Round as a pillow, and whiter than milk, 
And softer than if it were covered with silk. 
Sometimes he'll hide in the cave of a rock, 
Then whistle as shrill as the buzzard cock; 
— Yet seek him, — and what shall you find in the place ? 
Nothing but silence and empty space ; 
Save, in a corner, a heap of dry leaves, 
That he's left, for a bed, to beggars or thieves 1 



POEMS. 209 

As soon as 'tis daylight to-morrow, with me, 
You shall go to the orchard, and then you will see 
That he has been there, and made such a rout, 
And cracked the branches, and strewn them about ; 
Heaven grant that he spare but that one upright twig 
That looked up at the sky so proud and big 
All last summer, as well you know, 
Studded with apples, a beautiful show ! 
Hark ! over the roof he makes a pause, 
And growls as if he would fix his claws 
Right in the slates, and with a huge rattle, 
Drive them down, like men in a battle : 

— But let him range round; he does us no harm, 
We build up the fire, we're snug and warm; 
Untouched by his breath, see the candle shines bright, 
And burns with a clear and steady light; 

Books have we to read, — but that half-stifled knell, 
Alas ! 'tis the sound of the eight o'clock bell. 

— Come now, we'll to bed! and when we are there, 
He may work his own will, and what shall we care ? 
He may knock at the door, — we'll not let him in ; 
May drive at the windows, — we'll laugh at his din; 
Let him seek his own home, wherever it be ; 
Here's a cozie warm house for Edward and me." 

The next (also a child's poem), written in 1807, 
was composed on the eve of the return of Mrs. Words- 
worth, after a month's absence in London. Miss 
Wordsworth and the children were then staying at 
Coleorton : — 

"THE MOTHER'S RETURN. 

" A month, sweet little-ones, is past 
Since your dear Mother went away, — 
And she to-morrow will return ; 
To-morrow is the happy day. 



2IO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

" O blessed tidings ! thought of joy ! 
The eldest heard with steady glee ; 
Silent he stood ; then laughed amain, — 
And shouted, ' Mother, come to me ! ' 

" Louder and louder did he shout, 
With witless hope to bring her near ; 
* Nay, patience ! patience, little boy ! 
Your tender mother cannot hear.' 

" I told of hills, and far-off towns, 
And long, long vales to travel through, 
He listens, puzzled, sore perplexed, 
But he submits ; what can he do ? 

" No strife disturbs his sister's breast ; 
She wars not with the mystery 
Of time and distance, night and day ; 
The bonds of our humanity. 

"Her joy is like an instinct — joy 
Of kitten, bird, or summer fly ; 
She dances, runs without an aim ; 
She chatters in her ecstasy. 

"Her brother now takes up the note, 
And echoes back his sister's glee ; 
They hug the infant in my arms, 
As if to force his sympathy. 

"Then, settling into fond discourse, 
We rested in the garden bower ; 
While sweetly shone the evening sun, 
In his departing hour. 

"We told o'er all that we had done, — 
Our rambles by the swift brook's side, 
Far as the willow-skirted pool, 
Where two fair swans together glide. 



POEMS. 211 

" We talked of change, of winter gone, 
Of green leaves on the hawthorn spray, 
Of birds that build their nests and sing, 
And all ' since Mother went away ! ' 

" To her these tales they will repeat, 
To her our new-born tribes will show, 
The goslings green, the ass's colt, 
The lambs that in the meadow go. 

" — But see, the evening star comes forth ! 
To bed the children must depart; 
A moment's heaviness they feel, 
A sadness at the heart : 

" 'Tis gone — and in a merry fit 
They run upstairs in gamesome race ; 
I, too, infected by their mood, 
I could have joined the wanton chase. 

" Five minutes past — and, O the change 1 
Asleep upon their beds they lie ; 
Their busy limbs in perfect rest, 
And closed the sparkling eye." 

The following poem was written at Rydal Mount in 
1832. Wordsworth has said he believed it arose out 
of a casual expression of one of Mr. Swinburne's 
children : — 

LOVING AND LIKING: IRREGULAR VERSES, AD- 
DRESSED TO A CHILD. 

" There's more in words than I can teach ; 
Yet listen, Child ! — I would not preach; 
But only give some plain directions 
To guide your speech and your affections. 
Say not you love a roasted fowl, 
But you may love a screaming owl, 



212 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

And, if you can, the unwieldy toad 
That crawls from his secure abode 
Within the mossy garden wall 
When evening dews begin to fall. 
Oh mark the beauty of his eye : 
What wonders in that circle lie ! 
So clear, so bright, our fathers said 
He wears a jewel in his head ! 

*' And when upon some showery day, 
Into a path or public way 
A frog leaps out from bordering grass, 
Startling the timid as they pass, 
Do you observe him, and endeavor 
To take the intruder into favor ; 
Learning from him to find a reason 
P'or a light heart in a dull season. 
And you may love him in the pool, 
That is for him a happy school, 
In which he swims as taught by nature, 
Fit pattern for a human creature, 
Glancing amid the water bright, 
And sending upward sparkling light. 

" Nor blush if o'er your heart be stealing 
A love for things that have no feeling : 
The spring's first rose by you espied 
May fill your breast with joyful pride ; 
And you may love the strawberry-flower, 
And love the strawberry in its bower ; 
But when the fruit, so often praised 
For beauty, to your lip is raised, 
Say not you love the delicate treat, 
But like it, enjoy it, and thankfully eat. 

" Long may you love your pensioner mouse, 
Though one of a tribe that torment the house : 
Nor dislike for her cruel sport the cat, 
Deadly foe both of mouse and rat ; 



POEMS. 213 

Remember she follows the law of her kind, 
And Instinct is neither wayward nor blind. 
Then think of her beautiful gliding form, 
Her tread that would scarcely crush a worm, 
And her soothing song by the winter fire, 
Soft as the dying throb of the lyre. 

"I would not circumscribe your love : 
It may soar with the eagle and brood with the dove, 
May pierce the earth with the patient mole, 
Or track the hedgehog to his hole. 
Loving and liking are the solace of life, 
Rock the cradle of joy, smooth the death-bed of strife. 

" You love your father and your mother, 
Your grown-up and your baby brother ; 
You love your sister, and your friends, 
And countless blessings which God sends : 
And while these right affections play, 
You live each moment of your day; 
They lead you on to full content, 
And likings fresh and innocent, 
That store the mind, the memory feed, 
And prompt to many a gentle deed : 
But likings come, and pass away ; 
Tis love that remains till our latest day : 
Our heavenward guide is holy love, 
And will be our bliss with saints above." 

The poem suggested by an island on Derwent-water, 
which is said to have been composed so late as the 
year 1842, shows that, if the date be correct, which is 
somewhat doubtful, Miss Wordsworth was at that time 
in full possession of her faculties. These lines, we are 
informed, she used to take pleasure in repeating during 
her last illness. 



214 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 



"FLOATING ISLAND. 

" Harmonious Powers with Nature work 
On sky, earth, river, lake, and sea ; 
Sunshine and cloud, whirlwind and breeze, 
All in one duteous task agree. 

" Once did I see a slip of earth 
(By throbbing waves long undermined) 
Loosed from its hold ; how, no one knew, 
But all might see it float, obedient to the wind ; 

" Might see it, from the mossy shore 
Dissevered, float upon the Lake, 
Float with its crest of trees adorned 
On which the warbling birds their pastime take. 

" Food, shelter, safety, there they find ; 
There berries ripen, flowerets bloom ; 
There insects live their lives, and die ; 
A peopled world it is ; in size a tiny room. 

" And thus through many seasons' space 
This little Island may survive ; 
But Nature, though we mark her not, 
Will take away, may cease to give. 

" Perchance when you are wandering forth 
Upon some vacant sunny day, 
Without an object, hope, or fear, 
Thither your eyes may turn — the Isle is passed away; 

" Buried beneath the glittering Lake, 
Its place no longer to be found ; 
Yet the lost fragments shall remain 
To fertilize some other ground." 



JOURNAL OF A TOUR AT ULLS WATER. 215 



CHAPTER XIX. 

JOURNAL OF A TOUR AT ULLSWATER. 

A.D. 1805. 

ON the 7th of November, on a damp and gloomy 
morning, we left Grasmere Vale, intending to 
pass a few days on the banks of Ullswater. A mild 
and dry autumn had been unusually favorable to the 
preservation and beauty of foliage ; and, far advanced 
as the season was, the trees on the larger island of 
Rydal Mere retained a splendor which did not need 
the heightening of sunshine. We noticed as we passed 
that the line of the gray rocky shore of that island, 
shaggy with variegated bushes and shrubs, and spotted 
and striped with purplish brown heath, indistinguish- 
ably blending with its image reflected in the still water, 
produced a curious resemblance, both in form and 
color, to a richly- coated caterpillar, as it might appear 
through a magnifying glass of extraordinary power. 
The mists gathered as we went along : but when we 
reached the top of Kirkstone, we were glad we had 
not been discouraged by the apprehension of bad 
weather. Though not able to see a hundred yards 
before us, we were more than contented. At such a 



2l6 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

time, and in such a place, every scattered stone the 
size of one's head becomes a companion. 

Near the top of the Pass is the remnant of an old 
wall, which (magnified, though obscured, by the va- 
por) might have been taken for a fragment of some 
monument of ancient grandeur — yet that same pile 
of stones we had never before even observed. This 
situation, it must be allowed, is not favorable to gayety ; 
but a pleasing hurry of spirits accompanies the surprise 
occasioned by objects transformed, dilated or distorted, 
as they are when seen through such a medium. Many 
of the fragments of rock on the top and slopes of Kirk- 
stone, and of similar places, are fantastic enough in 
themselves ; but the full effect of such impressions can 
only be had in a state of weather when they are not 
likely to be sought for. It was not till we had descend- 
ed considerably that the fields of Hartshop were seen, 
like a lake tinged by the reflection of sunny clouds. I 
mistook them for Brother's-water, but soon after we 
saw that lake gleaming faintly with a steely brightness, 
— then as we continued to descend, appeared the 
brown oaks, and the birches of lively yellow, and the 
cottages, and the lowly Hall of Hartshop, with its long 
roof and ancient chimneys. During great part of our 
way to Patterdale we had rain, or rather drizzling 
vapor ; for there was never a drop upon our hair or 
clothes larger than the smallest pearl upon a lady's 
ring. 

The following morning incessant rain till eleven 
o'clock, when the sky began to clear, and we walked 
along the eastern shore of Ullswater towards the farm 



JOURNAL OF A TOUR AT ULLS WATER. 2l*J 

of Blowick. The wind blew strong, and drove the 
clouds forwards on the side of the mountain above 
our heads: — two storm - stiffened, black yew-trees 
fixed our notice, seen through, or under the edge of, 
the flying mists, four or five goats were bounding 
among the rocks ; — the sheep moved about more 
quietly, or cowered beneath their sheltering places. 
This is the only part of the country where goats are 
now found ; J but this morning, before we had seen 
these, I was reminded of that picturesque animal by 
two rams of mountain breed, both with Ammonian 
horns, and with beards majestic as that which Michael 
Angelo has given to his study of Moses. — But to re- 
turn ; when our path had brought us to that part of 
the naked common which overlooks the woods and 
bush-besprinkled fields of Blowick, the lake, clouds, 
and mists were all in motion to the sound of sweeping 
winds ; — the church and cottages of Patterdale scarce- 
ly visible, or seen only by fits between the shifting 
vapors. To the northward the scene was less vis- 
ionary ; — Place Fell steady and bold ; — the whole 
lake driving onward like a great river — ■ waves dancing 
round the small islands. The house at Blowick was 
the boundary of our walk ; and we returned, lamenting 
to see a decaying and uncomfortable dwelling in a place 
where sublimity and beauty seemed to contend with 
each other. But these regrets were dispelled by a 
glance on the woods that clothe the opposite steeps 
of the lake. How exquisite was the mixture of sober 

1 They have since disappeared. 



2l8 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

and splendid hues ! The general coloring of the trees 
was brown — rather that of ripe hazel-nuts ; but to- 
wards the water there were yet bays of green, and in 
the higher parts of the wood was abundance of yellow 
foliage, which, gleaming through a vapory lustre, re- 
minded us of masses of clouds, as you see them gath- 
ered together in the west, and touched with the golden 
light of the setting sun. After dinner we walked up 
the vale ; I had never had an idea of its extent and 
width in passing along the public road on the other 
side. We followed the path that leads from house to 
house ; two or three times it took us through some of 
those copses or groves that cover the little hillocks in 
the middle of the vale, making an intricate and pleas- 
ant intermixture of lawn and wood. Our fancies could 
not resist the temptation, and we fixed upon a spot for 
a cottage, which we began to build, and finished as 
easily as castles are raised in the air. Visited the 
same spot in the evening. I shall say nothing of the 
moonlight aspect of the situation which had charmed 
us so much in the afternoon ; but I wish you had been 
with us when, in returning to our friend's house, we 
espied his lady's large white dog lying in the moon- 
shine upon a round knoll under the old yew tree in 
the garden, a romantic image — and the elegant crea- 
ture, as fair as a spirit ! The torrents murmured softly : 
the mountains down which they were falling did not, 
to my sight, furnish a background for this Ossianic 
picture ; but I had a consciousness of the depth of the 
seclusion, and that mountains were embracing us on 
all sides ; " I saw not, but I felt that they were there." 



JOURNAL OF A TOUR AT ULLSWATER. 219 

Friday, November g. — Rain, as yesterday, till ten 
o'clock, when we took a boat to row down the lake. 
The day improved ; clouds and sunny gleams on the 
mountains. In the large bay under Place Fell three 
fishermen were dragging a net — picturesque group be- 
neath the high and large crags. A raven was seen 
aloft ; not hovering like the kite, for that is not the 
habit of the bird, but passing on with a straightforward 
perseverance, and timing the motion of its wings to its 
own croaking. The waters were agitated, and the iron 
tone of the raven's voice, which strikes upon the ear 
at all times as the more dolorous from its regularity, 
was in fine keeping with the wild scene before our 
eyes. This carnivorous bird is a great enemy to the 
lambs of these solitudes. The fishermen drew their 
net ashore, and hundreds of fish were leaping in their 
prison. They were all of the kind called skellies, a 
sort of fresh water herring, shoals of which may some- 
times be seen dimpling or rippling the surface of the 
lake in calm weather. This species is not found, I 
believe, in any other of these lakes ; nor, as far as 
I know, is the chevin, that spiritless fish (though I am 
loath to call it so, for it was a prime favorite with Izaac 
Walton), which must frequent Ullswater, as I have seen 
a large shoal passing into the lake from the river Ea- 
mont. Here are no pike, and the char are smaller 
than those of the other lakes, and of inferior quality ; 
but the gray trout attains a very large size, sometimes 
weighing above twenty pounds. This lordly creature 
seems to know that " retiredness is a piece of majesty," 
for it is scarcely ever caught, or even seen, except 



220 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

when it quits the depths of the lake in the spawning 
season, and runs up into the streams, where it is too 
often destroyed in disregard of the law of the land and 
of nature. 

Quitted the boat in the bay of Sandwyke, and pur- 
sued our way towards Martindale, along a pleasant 
path — at first through a coppice bordering the lake, 
then through green fields — and came to the village 
(if village it may be called, for the houses are few, 
and separated from each other), a scattered spot, shut 
out from the view of the lake. Crossed the one- 
arched bridge, below the chapel, with its bare ring 
of mossy wall and single yew tree. At the last house 
in the dale we were greeted by the master, who was 
sitting at his door, with a flock of sheep collected 
round him, for the purpose of smearing them with 
tar (according to the custom of the season) for pro- 
tection against the winter's cold. He invited us to 
enter and view a room, built by Mr. Hasell, for the 
accommodation of his friends at the annual chase of 
red deer in his forests, at the head of these dales. 
The room is fitted up in the sportsman's style, with a 
cupboard for bottles and glasses, strong chairs, and 
a dining-table ; and ornamented with the horns of the 
stags caught at these hunts for a succession of years 
— the length of the last race each had run being re- 
corded under his spreading antlers. The good woman 
treated us with oaten cake, new and crisp ; and after 
this welcome refreshment and rest, we proceeded 
on our return to Patterdale by a short cut over the 
mountains. On leaving the fields of Sandwyke, while 



JOURNAL OF A TOUR AT ULLS 'WATER. 221 

ascending up a gentle slope along the valley of Martin- 
dale, we had occasion to observe that in thinly-peopled 
glens of this character the general want of wood gives 
a peculiar interest to the scattered cottages embowered 
in sycamore. Towards its head this valley splits into 
two parts ; and in one of these (that to the left) there is 
no house nor any building to be seen but a cattle-shed 
on the side of a hill, which is sprinkled over with trees, 
evidently the remains of an extensive forest. Near the 
entrance of the other division stands the house where 
we were entertained, and beyond the enclosures of 
that farm there are no other. A few old trees remain 
— relics of the forest ; a little stream hastens, though 
with serpentine windings, through the uncultivated 
hollow where many cattle were pasturing. The cattle 
of this country are generally white, or light-colored ; 
but these were dark brown or black, which heightened 
the resemblance this scene bears to many parts of the 
Highlands of Scotland. 

While we paused to rest on the hill-side, though 
well contented with the quiet every-day sounds — the 
lowing of cattle, bleating of sheep, and the very gentle 
murmuring of the valley stream — we could not but 
think what a grand effect the music of the bugle-horn 
would have among these mountains. It is still heard 
once every year at the chase I have spoken of — a day 
of festivity for the inhabitants of this district, except 
the poor deer, the most ancient of them all. Our 
ascent even to the top was very easy. When it was 
accomplished we had exceedingly fine views, some of 
the lofty fells being resplendent with sunshine, and 



222 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

others partly shrouded by clouds. Ullswater, bor- 
dered by black steeps, was of dazzling brightness ; 
the plain beyond Penrith smooth and bright, or rather 
gleamy, as the sea or sea-sands. Looked down into 
Boardale, which, like Skybarrow, has been named from 
the wild swine that formerly abounded here ; but it 
has now no sylvan covert, being smooth and bare, a 
long, narrow, deep, cradle-shaped glen lying so shel- 
tered, that one would be pleased to see it planted by 
human hand, there being a sufficiency of soil ; and 
the trees would be sheltered, almost like shrubs in a 
green-house. After having walked some way along 
the top of the hill, came in view of Glenridding, and 
the mountains at the head of Grisedale. — Before we 
began to descend, we turned aside to a small ruin, 
called at this day the chapel, where it is said the 
inhabitants of Martindale and Patterdale were accus- 
tomed to assemble for worship. There are now no 
traces from which you could infer for what use the 
building had been erected ; the loose stones, and the 
few that yet continued piled up, resemble those which 
lie elsewhere on the mountain ; but the shape of the 
building having been oblong, its remains differ from 
those of the common sheep-fold ; and it has stood 
east and west. Scarcely did the Druids, when they fled 
to these fastnesses, perform their rites in any situation 
more exposed to disturbance from the elements. One 
cannot pass by without being reminded that the rustic 
psalmody must have had the accompaniment of many 
a wildly-whistling blast ; and what dismal storms must 
have often drowned the voice of the preacher ! 



JOURNAL OF A TOUR AT ULLS WATER. 223 

As we ascend, Patterdale opens upon the eye in 
grand simplicity, screened by mountains, and pro- 
ceeding from two heads — Deepdale and Hartshop — 
where lies the little lake of Brothers Water, named in 
old maps Broader Water, and probably rightly so ; for 
Bassenthvvaite Mere at this side is familiarly called 
Broad Water ; but the change in the appellation of 
this small lake or pool (if it be a corruption) may have 
been assisted by some melancholy incident, similar to 
what happened about twenty years ago, when two 
brothers were drowned there, having gone out to take 
their holiday-pleasure upon the ice on a New Year's 
Day. 

A rough and precipitous peat-track brought us down 
to our friend's house. Another fine moonlight night ; 
but a thick fog rising from the neighboring river envel- 
oped the rocky and wood-crested knoll on which our 
fancy cottage had been erected ; and, under the damp 
cast upon my feelings, I consoled myself with moral- 
izing on the folly of hasty decisions in matters of 
importance, and the necessity of having at least 
one's knowledge of a place before you realize airy 
suggestions in solid stone. 

Saturday, November 10. — At the breakfast-table, 
tidings reached us of the death of Lord Nelson, and 
of the victory of Trafalgar. Sequestered as we were 
from the sympathy of a crowd, we were shocked to 
hear that the bells had been ringing joyously at Pen- 
rith, to celebrate the triumph. In the rebellion of the 
year 1745, people fled with their valuables from the 



224 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

open country of Patterdale, as a place of refuge, secure 
from the incursions of strangers. At that time news 
such as we had heard might have been long in pene- 
trating so far into the recesses of the mountains ; but 
now, as you know, the approach is easy, and the com- 
munication in summer time almost hourly ; nor is this 
strange, for travellers after pleasure are become not 
less active, and more numerous than those who for- 
merly left their homes for the purposes of gain. The 
priest on the banks of the remotest stream of Lapland 
will talk familiarly of Bonaparte's last conquests, and 
discuss the progress of the French Revolution, having 
acquired much of his information from adventurers 
impelled by curiosity alone. 

The morning was clear and cheerful, after a night 
of sharp frost. At ten o'clock we took our way on 
foot towards Pooley Bridge, on the same side of the 
lake we had coasted in a boat the day before. Looked 
backwards to the south from our favorite station above 
Blowick. The dazzling sunbeams striking upon the 
church and village, while the earth was steaming with 
exhalations, not traceable in other quarters, rendered 
their forms even more indistinct than the partial and 
flitting veil of unillumined vapor had done two days 
before. The grass on which we trod, and the trees in 
every thicket, were dripping with melted hoar frost. 
We observed the lemon-colored leaves of the birches, 
as the breeze turned them to the sun, sparkle, or 
rather flash, like diamonds, and the leafless purple 
twigs were tipped with globes of shining crystal. 

The day continued delightful and unclouded to the 



JOURNAL OF A TOUR AT ULLSWATER. 225 

end. I will not describe the country which we slowly- 
travelled through, nor relate our adventures ; and will 
only add that on the afternoon of the 13th we returned 
along the banks of Ullswater by the usual road. The 
lake lay in deep repose, after the agitations of a wet 
and stormy morning. The trees in Gowbarrow Park 
were in that state when what is gained by the disclo- 
sure of their bark and branches compensates, almost, 
for the loss of foliage, exhibiting the variety which 
characterizes the point of time between autumn and 
winter. The hawthorns were leafless ; their round 
heads covered with rich green berries, and adorned 
with arches of green brambles, and eglnatines hung 
with glossy hips ; and the gray trunks of some of the 
ancient oaks, which, in the summer season, might have 
been regarded only for their venerable majesty, now 
attracted notice by a pretty embellishment of green 
mosses and fern, intermixed with russet leaves, re- 
tained by those slender outstarting twigs, which the 
veteran tree would not have tolerated in his strength. 
The smooth silver branches of the ashes were bare ; 
most of the alders as green as the Devonshire cottage- 
myrtle that weathers the snows of Christmas. — Will 
you accept it as some apology for my having dwelt 
so long on the woodland ornaments of these scenes, 
that artists speak of the trees on the banks of Ulls- 
water, and especially along the bays of Stybarrow 
crags, as having a peculiar character of picturesque 
intricacy in their stems and branches, which their 
rocky stations and the mountain winds have combined 
to give them ? At the end of Gowbarrow Park a large 



226 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 

herd of deer were either moving slowly or standing 
still among the fern. I was sorry when a chance com- 
panion, who had joined us by the way, startled them 
with a whistle, disturbing an image of grave simplicity 
and thoughtful enjoyment; for I could have fancied 
that those natives of this wild and beautiful region 
were partaking with us a sensation of the solemnity 
of the closing day. 

The sun had been set some time, and we could per- 
ceive that the light was fading away from the coves of 
Helvellyn ; but the lake under the luminous sky was 
more brilliant than before. 

After tea at Patterdale set out again ; — a fine even- 
ing ; the seven stars close to the mountain top ; all 
the stars seemed brighter than usual. The steeps 
were reflected in Brothers Water, and, above the lake, 
appeared like enormous black, perpendicular walls. 
The Kirkstone torrents had been swollen by the rains, 
and now filled the mountain pass with their roaring, 
which added greatly to the solemnity of our walk. 
Behind us, when we had climbed to a great height, we 
saw one light, very distinct, in the vale, like a large 
red star — a solitary one in the gloomy region. The 
cheerfulness of the scene was in the sky above us. 

Reached home a little before midnight. 



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